


The same old witchcraft when your eyes meet mine

by CheapLemonIceLolly



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Curses, M/M, Magic Made Them Do It, Magic in the NHL, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-02-10 07:11:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18655510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheapLemonIceLolly/pseuds/CheapLemonIceLolly
Summary: "Make someone fall in love? Impossible. Love is pure and incorruptible," she says. "But infatuation? Sexual lust? These are feelings that can be manipulated.”Mitch freezes. The image of John's face looking down at him all sexy-concerned swims up through his mind, followed by an unnecessarily vivid memory of his ass in sweaty leggings. It feels a bit like the butterflies in his stomach have been replaced by a small tornado.  That's on fire.“Oh,” he says, blushing all the way down to the soles of his feet. “Sexual lust, eh.”Mitch is cursed.  Luckily John can help.





	1. Cracked

**Author's Note:**

> This is a "magic made them do it" trope subversion fic! It's not a traditional instance of the trope and there will be nothing nonconsensual in this story, but be aware if those kind of noncon-adjacent setups are not your bag <3
> 
> I started secretly writing this for hmasfatty ages ago because she was sad there wasn't more JT fic, and in the process I learned that the reason there isn't more JT fic is that fairly reserved (or endearingly boring, we might say) characters are much, much harder to write than characters with really big expressive personalities! Anyway, thanks for putting up with my whining and encouraging me to start posting this before it's finished, I love you and your boring husband and I hope you like this! <3
> 
> Note for WiP haters: the fic is fully plotted but not fully written, which makes me nervous but I know where we're going so LET'S DO THIS - I'm expecting to be done by the end of May, with four updates (including this one). Follow along, or you can subscribe and AO3 will let you know when it's all finished! And feel free to yell at/with me here or on tumblr as we go (I'm just lemonicelolly over there)

Mitch doesn't know how it happens, but he feels it the instant his amulet breaks.

There's a scrum in front of the net after the whistle and Mitch is being banged around on all sides by Islanders. It's been a weird game, not that the Isles have been super hostile, but it's kind of _charged_ , like everyone's getting a little more pushed around than they would've been last year. Not so anyone else would notice, and not enough to say anything, but he notices; he's on edge. And then in all the pushing and shoving someone knocks him hard enough that he spins around on his skates, and he feels this sharp shock of pain as the protective amulet he's wearing goes _crack_ , right down the middle.

It's a shock, for sure, but nothing else happens so he kind of just ignores it. But then when he gets back to the bench and sits down next to John, bumping their shoulders together as John leans in to say something, this strange ache flares suddenly in his chest. He presses his knuckles against his chest protector, and makes a face.

"What's wrong?" John asks, frowning at him.

"I dunno," Mitch shakes his head. "I think my amulet's broken? Feels weird."

"Weird how?" says John, frowning harder. "You think it's not working or you felt it break?"

He sounds alarmed, which is itself alarming, because Mitch didn't really think it mattered. He turns his head, and John's leaning in close with this very serious look on his face. Even more serious than usual.

"I...I felt it break, I guess," Mitch says, feeling unsettled. "It's probably noth--"

But John's already leaning behind him, calling for the bench witch, and Mitch winces. He seriously hates the bench witch. She's utterly terrifying.

"No, come on," he whines. "I feel fine, can't I wait and get a new amulet once the game's over?"

"Amulets don't break by accident," John says sternly. "If someone broke it, they did it on purpose. Can I see?"

He shakes his glove off and reaches up to snag the chain at the back of Mitch's neck with one finger. He has to slide his hand around against the skin until he can tug the amulet up out of the front of Mitch's gear, and it makes a tingling, shivery sensation flood down Mitch's spine like goosebumps. Probably residual magic from the broken amulet, or something. Mitch tries not to think about that too much.

"I'll take that," the bench witch says from behind him. Mitch jumps.

She swipes the amulet out of John's hand and pulls it upwards, and she may be a witch and therefore terrifying, but seriously, she yanks hard enough that the chain nearly garrots him, which seems excessive. Mitch is about to protest, but John pats his back a little and it's reassuring, so he keeps his mouth shut. He's considering making a complaint later though.

"Cracked," the bench witch announces unnecessarily, cause like...yeah, he knows. That's why she's here. She waves the amulet right next to his nose so Mitch can see for himself the way the face of the number 16 is splintered, like a piece of glass someone stepped on. "Can't play with it like this. Locker room, now."

"What?" Mitch chokes. "No, seriously, I feel fine. Can't I just wear a spare one?" He doesn't actually feel fine, he feels sick and half strangled, but that has nothing to do with his broken amulet. He just feels sicker when the bench witch ignores him completely and sweeps over to Babcock to mutter into his ear. Babs squints over at him grimly and jerks his chin at him, which is like a full on lecture in Babs-speak, and Mitch feels even worse. "I can _play_ ," he says, "I'm _fine_." The game's not even half over! Come on!

"You don't know that," John says gently, giving his shoulder a squeeze. "It could be a bad luck spell, an unbalancing, something designed to hurt you and make it look like an accident."

Mitch stares at him in alarm. "They can do that?"

"Not legally," John frowns, "but I've seen it happen. Freak collisions, bad concussions. Always hard to prove but it used to happen a lot more before everyone started wearing amulets. Ever wonder what happened to Crosby?"

Okay that...sounds bad. Mitch can feel his heart starting to race. Is he cursed right now? He looks worriedly up at the bench witch as she makes her way back over and she rolls her eyes.

"Why are you still here?" she says. "I said locker room, let's go."

"Go on," John tells him, with another encouraging shoulder squeeze. "Better safe than sorry."

It's such a stupid meaningless phrase that if anyone else said it Mitch would be the one rolling his eyes, but somehow John always says stuff like "better safe than sorry" and "it is what it is" and "there's no I in team" and makes it sound like he actually believes them, so Mitch feels a little better anyway. He swallows down his rising nausea, nods, and stands up.

"Better safe than sorry," he echoes. It sounds way dumber when he says it. Then John gives him this reassuring little smile that makes the weird ache in Mitch's chest feel both better and worse at the same time, and the bench witch sweeps him away down the tunnel before he can say anything else.

*

They lose.

It's probably not on him. Like, they all need to be able to pull together if someone gets hurt, but it's just...it really sucks. It's the first time John's had to face the Islanders since he came to Toronto, in his new barn, and Mitch really wanted them to light it up for him, to make sure he knows he made the right choice.

It feels especially shit because Mitch doesn't feel bad at all, not physically. There's nothing to justify not playing the last period and a half. What John said on the bench about bad luck spells and magic accidents was freaky, sure, but the bench witch gave him a once-over and there were none of the obvious curses or bad news enchantments or whatever. Plus she gave him this new temporary amulet to wear that itches like crazy, and nothing's happened to that one. So either he hasn't been cursed at all, and he left his liney in the lurch for literally no reason, or...well, or the curse is something low key that could strike any time.

He's trying not to think about that option too much. Anyway, the damage is done. They got their asses handed to them by John's old team, and they won't get to right that wrong for ages, not until the end of February. What a fucking shitty end to the year.

Mitch is already showered and dressed, just hanging out in his stall, while the other guys trudge in. He doesn't even want to look at John when he sits down in the stall next to Mitch and starts unlacing his skates, he feels that bad.

Nobody talks while they all strip down. Auston looks pissed off and exhausted. Naz hurls his helmet into the back of his locker so hard it rebounds back out again and rolls into the middle of the floor. He just leaves it there, and everyone else ignores it.

Mitch doesn't know what to say.

He glances sideways at John, at the stern line of his profile and the sweaty hair curling over his forehead, and he feels like he should apologise, grovel, something. Mea culpa, dude, I really fucked everything up. But before he can say anything John glances up and catches him looking, and shakes his head like he can read Mitch's mind.

"Don't dwell on it," he says. "Shitty games happen. It doesn't matter who we're playing."

That's clearly bullshit, because if someone _was_ firing off curses out there, it obviously matters that it was John's old team. If they'd been playing anyone else Mitch probably wouldn't even have got magic-attacked in the first place. He opens his mouth to say that, but John pats him on the leg, cutting him off. It's really only the briefest of touches, but...but Mitch can still feel the heat of his palm seconds later when John gets up to finish stripping off the rest of his gear. The sensation lingers.

That's weird.

"Seriously, put it behind you," John says, pulling his sweaty undershirt over his head. "It wasn't your fault. I know you've got my back."

Mitch looks up and gets an eyeful of that back, and his chest does that same strange achy thing from before, like an invisible fist gently punching him in the heart. His mouth feels kind of weird and dry as he watches John's muscles move under the skin when he lowers his arms and tucks his thumbs into the waistband of his leggings to pull them down. But hang on, that's not right. You don't watch guys undress in the locker room. It's not normal to notice the way the perspiration beads at the back of your buddy's neck, or the way his sweat-damp leggings cling to his thighs and hug the perfect curve of his…

"Are you sure you feel okay?" John says, and Mitch's eyes snap back up to his face.

"Nothing," he squeaks out. "I mean, yeah, there's nothing...wrong, I'm fine. Just. Just still feel kind of rattled I guess." Uh, what the fuck was that? He keeps his eyes fixed on John's face while John peels off the last of his clothing. "I'll feel better when I've got my new amulet."

"Yeah for sure," John says. "Those temporary ones are never as comfortable. It must suck not knowing if they did something to you."

All he can see, because he won't let himself look anywhere else, is John's rumpled head and his bare shoulders. And all of a sudden his heart's racing and his palms are sweating like he just stepped off the ice.

"Yeah," Mitch says weakly, rubbing his hands over his thighs. "It sucks."

John wraps a towel around his waist and gives Mitch one last commiserating look before he heads for the showers, and Mitch, despite his better judgement, watches him leave. It's a way nicer view than he remembers it being before now.

Oh yeah, he's pretty sure they did something to him, alright. And he's starting to get an idea of what the spell was.

*

The bench witch's name is Valeriya. She's Russian or something close to Russian (Mitch's world geography isn't the best), and she has dyed red hair and a deep appreciation for dark lipsticks the colour of dried blood. None of those things really make her, you know. Approachable. Mitch has been around magic since he was four years old, when his dad got him his first custom amulet to ward off "talentless kids and their jealous parents," but it's still as freaky and disturbing to him now as it was then. Still, when you've got a problem you consult the experts, so.

"Uh, hey, excuse me," he says, hovering in the doorway of the tiny windowless office Valeriya calls home. "Can I ask you something?"

There are posters stuck to all the walls with all these spooky esoteric sigils and stuff printed on them. They match the gigantic old book on the desk that looks like a prop from Chilling Adventures of Sabrina or something. Honestly Mitch doesn't know whether all of this is necessary for sports witchcraft or if it's just set dressing because Valeriya likes the guys to be a little afraid of her, but it doesn't matter all that much, because it works. When she looks up at him, unsmiling, he feels like he might throw up.

“Uh, yeah,” he says, trying to keep it light. “Just wondering...are love spells a thing?”

Valeriya snorts. “Getting you a date is a little outside my job description I think,” she says, and goes back to her book.

“Oh, what?" Mitch makes a face. Uh, rude. He can get his own dates, thank you very much. "No, I don’t want you to— geez. I’m just asking...is that real? Can witches make you, like," he takes a deep breath and finishes in a rush, "fall in love with someone?”

It sounds completely crazy as soon as he's said it out loud, the idea that bumping into the wrong guy out on the ice could make him _fall in love_ with his teammate, but he can't ignore the queasy, fluttery feeling in his stomach every time he lets his mind turn in John's direction. It feels like actual fucking butterflies. That _can't_ be natural.

Valeriya narrows her eyes at him suspiciously. “There are a lot of rumours about witches. Nasty ones”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend y—

“I’m not offended,” she sneers. “There is just misinformation. Make someone fall in love? Impossible. Love is pure and incorruptible.” 

Okay, so he wishes she wouldn't talk so dramatically, like a fortune teller at a carnival, but that's a relief. He lets out a deep sigh, but it turns out the bench witch isn't done yet.

“But infatuation?" she says. "Sexual lust? These are feelings that can be manipulated.”

Mitch freezes. The image of John's face looking down at him all sexy-concerned swims up through his mind, followed by an unnecessarily vivid memory of his ass in sweaty leggings. It feels a bit like the butterflies have been replaced by a small tornado. That's on fire.

“Oh,” he says, blushing all the way down to the soles of his feet. “Sexual lust, eh.”

Valeriya smiles. It's not comforting. “Old fashioned, I think, to see sex as impure. But,” she spreads her hands, “Magic is old fashioned at heart.”

"Right," Mitch says. He shifts uncomfortably on the spot, fidgeting with the cuff of his shirt. "Okay, cool, so. I think...that? Might have happened? To me?"

Valeriya's perfectly arched eyebrows shoot up towards her hairline. "Today?" Mitch nods, reluctantly, and Valeriya...well, she throws her head back and laughs.

Mitch isn't quite brave enough to tell an actual witch to shut the fuck up, it isn't fucking funny. And, okay, he can sort of see how it _would_ be funny if it wasn't, you know, actually happening to him. But she doesn't have to laugh _quite_ that hard, or for so long. A little professionalism, please!

"Oh god," Valeriya wheezes at last, dabbing an actual tear of laughter from the corner of her eye. "I needed that." She shakes her head and plants both hands on the desk. "Well, that is settled then. No harm done. I wouldn't have thought to look for a lust spell, but they are not dangerous anyway, so you don't need my help. I will forge a new amulet and--"

"Wait a second," Mitch interrupts. "What do you mean I don't need your help? Of course I do! I can't just stay like this!"

"Why not?" Valeriya blinks. "You are young, but surely you have had a crush before?"

"Of course I've had a crush before," Mitch splutters, "but not on--" He cuts himself off just in time. It's too fucking weird, and he could do without being laughed at again. "It's not the same, seriously. Come on, isn't there anything you can do about it? I'll try anything."

Valeriya looks at him thoughtfully. She puts her head on one side and taps one long fingernail against her dark red lip. Her nails are painted red too, the bright glossy scarlet of an arterial bleed. Someone has really got to tell her that red isn't a comforting colour, like, at all.

"There is one solution I have heard of," she says eventually. "If you want, you can try it." 

" _Anything_."

"Alright. You ask the subject of the spell to give you some physical relief from your lust and it should be over after that." When Mitch just stares at her, uncomprehending, she rolls her eyes. "Physical relief? Release. An orgasm. Like breaking a fever, you know."

Mitch does _not_ know. And then, a second later, he does. Oh _god_. It's suddenly like he can feel the weight of John's hand on his thigh from earlier all over again, hot and embarrassing.

"You mean get h-- them to...what," his face contorts in disbelief. "Give me a hand job or something?"

"Hand job, oral sex, prostate stimulation if you prefer," she says casually. "Any kind of stimulation to climax will suit the purpose."

Mitch squeezes his eyes shut. "Oh wow. Yeah, that's...that's not an option." He can't even imagine it. Oh wait, he just did imagine it, and now he's blushing so hard it feels like his face is on fire.

"Well, they're not usually powerful spells, so it ought to wear off eventually anyway," Valeriya shrugs, as if it doesn't matter. She flips over a new page in her witch set dressing book like, that's it, problem solved.

"You don't seem, like...concerned about this," Mitch accuses. He, on the other hand, is extremely concerned. He's about ten seconds from completely losing it, actually. Valeriya doesn't even look up this time.

"I have never understood the sexual prudishness of America," she sighs. 

"This is _Canada_ ," says Mitch.

"Whatever. I deal with many more serious enchantments than this one," Valeriya tells him dismissively. "If you had been cursed with sudden blindness, or fragile bones, or luck so bad a walk down the street might kill you, then, yes, I would be concerned. But this?" She shakes her head. "Seek out relief or do not, it doesn't matter to me. It will pass quickly or slowly, and it should not affect your on ice performance in either case."

Mitch can't imagine how he's going to handle training with John, playing with him, sharing _dressing rooms_ with him, while feeling like this. The thought that his hockey could go unaffected is completely insane.

"Great," he says with an incredulous little laugh. "Well, as long as my performance isn't affected there's no problem."

Valeriya lifts her head and gives him a pitying look. "Don't take this the wrong way," she says, "but that's really all I get paid to care about."

*

Okay. So, Mitch is cursed, and the only way to break the curse is to...well, the less he thinks about that part, the better. He spends way too much time in the next week or so thinking about decidedly risky John-related stuff as it is. He's trying to be disciplined about it but it turns out it's a lot harder to stop yourself picturing a guy naked when you've, like, actually seen him naked dozens of times.

Anyway, he's cursed, so it's not _really_ his fault. If anything, it's John's fault for pissing off the Islanders and then, on top of that, being so hot. Like, the guy could at least have the decency to be ugly if he's going to go around making witches mad, just as a precaution.

Mitch assumes it's John the witch is mad at, whoever they are. It's got to be one of the Islanders who did it, right? Someone with a kind of fucked up sense of humour, honestly, to think the best way to get back at John for leaving is to give him a super awkward groupie teammate. Probably whoever it is was hoping Mitch would throw himself at John and freak him out, or something, make him regret ever coming to Toronto. Well Mitch isn't going to give them the satisfaction. He's _never_ going to let John find out about any of this. He's got self control like that witch wouldn't believe.

"What's the matter with you?" Auston says, punching him in the thigh. "Do you need to piss or something?"

"What? No?" Mitch makes a face and gives him a retaliatory kick in the ankle. He took his shoes off when they got on the plane so it's pretty ineffectual, but the intent is there. "Nothing's the matter, I'm fine."

"Well could you fucking sit still, then? I'm trying to sleep, here."

The flight to New Jersey's only like an hour and a half, so Mitch rolls his eyes. Admittedly John's across the aisle a couple of rows forward with a sleep mask and noise cancelling headphones on, and he fell asleep about five minutes into the flight, but John's a special case. A ruggedly handsome special case who looks, like, strangely sexy when he's asleep with his head tipped back and his mouth hanging slightly open.

Okay, yeah, when Mitch actually thinks about it like that it's a little weird.

"Ugh, fine," Auston says, with this aggressively melodramatic sigh. "What's going on? Spill."

"Nothing's going on," Mitch says, tearing his eyes away from John's sleeping face. He thinks there might be a little drool at the corner of his mouth. "I'm totally normal."

Auston snorts. "You’ve never been normal in your life," he says, "and you've been acting twitchy even for you since you left that Isles game before new year. What is it? Are you still hurt and not telling anyone? Because if you've got, like, headaches or--"

"It's not that," Mitch says quickly. "I didn't go off 'cause I got hurt. It was…" 

He hesitates, chewing his lip. He can't just tell Auston everything, can he? It's too embarrassing. But he’s got to say _something_. It’s quiet enough on the plane that he can hear John making these soft little snuffling noises in his sleep and, god help him, he actually thinks it’s _cute_. If he doesn’t say something to someone he’s going to explode.

He casts a quick look around to make sure nobody else is listening, and then leans conspiratorially close to Auston, lowering his voice.

"Alright," he says. "I'm cursed."

Auston's eyebrows go up. "What, by a--"

"A witch, yeah, duh. Where else do you get curses from? Anyway, I'm kinda preoccupied about it so. That's what's up."

"What, on the ice? Why weren't you wearing an amulet, you dumbass?"

"I _was_ ," Mitch scowls. "The witch broke it. Like, I didn't even know they could do that. I'm getting a new one made but, you know. The harm's already done now."

Auston whistles. "Shit," he says, drawing the one syllable out. "Must be a strong witch." 

And that's...Mitch never even thought about it that way, but yeah, if it was easy to break an amulet and put a curse on someone it'd be happening all over the place, right? Why even have amulets if just any old witch can break them? God, does that mean the curse is extra strong? That it'll last longer? He glances over at John, still asleep across the aisle, and wonders if it's a sign that he kind of wants to go over and stick his fingers in his half open mouth. That's excessive, right? Probably a sign the curse is double extra strength or something?

"What kind of curse is it?" says Auston. "Like, bad luck or no sleep or…"

"It's um." Mitch looks back at him and worries his lip with his teeth again. What the hell. This probably can't get any more uncomfortable. "It's a love spell."

Auston just stares at him.

"A lust spell, actually," Mitch says. "Love spells aren't really a thing. But trust me, that doesn't make it--"

"You're fucking with me," Auston interrupts, half smiling. Mitch snorts.

"I _wish_. It's a mess, man."

Auston's baffled smile doesn't go away but he scrunches his nose a little. "Some super powerful secret witch on the _Islanders_ cursed _you_ to have, like, a crush on someone? Why? Who?"

"It's a little bit more than a crush, dude," Mitch says darkly. John sighs deeply in his sleep and the sound makes all of Mitch's hair stand on end, like John's breathing hot and close against the back of his neck. He shivers. "It's like, intense. And I don't know who, I didn't see." The question of who is honestly the least of Mitch's worries right now. Any one of them could have wanted to make things weird between him and John, anyway, except Marty. It's no secret that Mitch is a big reason why John's doing so well away from the island. Even Leo's kind of a dark horse.

"Not who cursed you, who's the spell...target or whatever," Auston says impatiently. "The person you're all _intense_ over." He says intense in this mock-dramatic voice like a soap opera matriarch.

"That's not important," Mitch says, but he blushes hard as he says it and Auston gets this knowing look on his face. It's seriously his most annoying expression, this smug little raised eyebrow smirk like he thinks he's smarter than Mitch is. He's usually right, but that only makes it more irritating.

"Teammate," Auston says, because he's the worst.

"No," Mitch protests, but he gets the knowing look again. "Alright, yeah. But you can't tell anyone."

Auston rolls his eyes and leans back in his seat. "As if I would. Anyway, we've got our own team witch, right? Just get her to break the spell for you guys or whatever. It's probably easier with you both in the same place, isn't it?"

"Uh," says Mitch. "Yes and no."

Auston's expression doesn't change that much as Mitch explains the lust spell exit clause (at a whisper, because he does _not_ need anyone else to know about that part thanks very much) but his eyebrows slowly crawl higher and higher up his giant forehead until he looks like he's had a badly botched facelift.

"It's not me is it?" he says when Mitch is finished, sounding slightly pained. "Because we're tight, man, but I'm not really comfortable touching your dick."

Mitch kicks him in the ankle again. "It's not you, asshole," he says. "But see? That's the whole thing. I can't just ask a guy to...to…" his gaze drifts across the plane to John again. His head's lolling forward now so his headphones have fallen off and he's got a double chin squished against his chest. Oh come on, he can’t still be hot like _that_. "God, it's going to take months to wear off," Mitch moans, putting his face in his hands. "I'm so fucked."

"Only not," Auston smirks, because he thinks he's fucking hilarious. Then he adds, louder, "Hey, it's not Travis is it? Cause you might get lucky there, actually."

"Is what Travis?" says Travis, popping up from the seat in front of them so suddenly Mitch nearly falls out of his chair.

"You'd fuck Marns if it was a matter of life and death, right Dermy?" Auston grins. He's enjoying himself way too much right now.

"Life and death?" Travis says. He scrunches up his nose and gives Mitch a once over, then cocks his head to one side. "Ehh."

"Uh, first of all, fucking rude, you should be so lucky," Mitch says, shoving the back of his chair with both feet. "And second of all, were you just like, lurking there listening in on our conversation?"

"Nah," Travis says, propping his chin on the back of the seat and flashing his dimples. "I'm just super attuned to the sound of my own name. It's like a sixth sense I have."

"I'm pretty sure hearing's one of the original five, dude," Auston says, and that sets off an argument about whether you can have a sixth sense that's _like_ hearing but, you know, dialed up to _eleven_ , or whether Travis is just a dumbass, and somewhere along the way they get too loud and John wakes up.

He wipes a hand over his mouth (yeah, there was definitely some drool action going on before) and then pushes his eye mask up onto his head where it makes his hair stand up in this absurd fluffy crest at the front. His face is all sleepy and flushed and disoriented when he glances over his shoulder towards the noise, but he catches Mitch's eye and gives him a small, drowsy smile. Mitch feels his stomach do a little loop the loop, like they've hit a sudden pocket of turbulence.

Yep. He's totally screwed.

*

When they get to Newark it's still kind of early, so some of the guys decide they're getting dinner at this place Brownie found on TripAdvisor. Mitch is up for it, keen to get his mind off things with a few drinks and a few laughs with the boys, but then…

“Johnny won’t come,” Mo chirps, ruffling John's hair on the way off the plane. “He’s gotta get his beauty sleep.”

“He looks fine to me,” Mitch says before he can stop himself. That wasn’t supposed to be out loud. Besides, he was kind of counting on John not being there; he almost never goes out on the road. Not before a game, anyway.

"I don't know, I could eat," John says, and stands up just as Auston’s shoving Mitch out into the aisle, so Mitch stumbles right into him. He puts an arm up to stop Mitch faceplanting into his chest and raises an eyebrow. “Someone’s got to keep you all in line, anyway.”

“Oh, I’m not going,” Mitch says hurriedly. The less time he spends in John’s orbit the better, probably, given that right now he's completely sober and feels one moment's bad judgement away from leaning in to smell his neck. And honestly, Mitch's judgement isn't great at the best of times, so who knows what he’s capable of after a couple of beers.

“What?” squawks Travis, the fucking traitor. “You said we were going to eat our own weight in buffalo wings.”

“Nice to see everyone making healthy choices,” John says dryly. The best comeback Mitch can muster is pulling a face at him, because John’s hand’s still lingering on his arm and about eighty percent of his brain processing power is focused on that right now, thanks for asking, but it is a particularly epic face. It makes John laugh.

So that's how Mitch finds himself _not_ talking shit with the boys and eating as much trashy bar food as he can stand like a normal person, but alone in bed at nine pm like a loser eating room service ice cream and watching The Lion King on his laptop in the dark. 

The one good thing about staying at the hotel is he can take that awful temporary amulet off. It's just this huge metal disc, this constant weight against his chest, it's not magically calibrated to him at all, and it makes him itch like crazy. Right now it's lying on the bedside table like a loaded gun, and Mitch is dreading the morning when he's going to have to put it back on again.

Also: room service dessert. Always a perk on the road. He's just about got the ice cream to the perfect soupy consistency when there's a knock at the door.

It's not Auston back from the bar, because he wouldn't bother knocking, and Mitch is pretty sure he didn't order any more room service. He thinks about pretending to be asleep for ten glorious seconds but he's too curious so he gets up and answers the door.

"Uh, hi," says John. "Can I come in?"

Mitch freezes in the doorway.

"I thought you were going out with the guys," he manages after a moment of stunned silence, trying to sound casual. Out of John's line of sight he's got a white knuckled grip on the door handle.

"I came back early," says John seriously, and John says almost everything seriously, but there's something extra serious this time that makes Mitch's heart sink even before he adds, "Because I wanted to check in with you."

Mitch grips the door handle a little tighter and forces a smile. "I'm fine, just wanted to get an early--"

"It's just," John interrupts, "Matts was telling me you got some tough news recently. From Valeriya?"

The smile slides right off Mitch's face. "He told you?"

John shrugs. "In his defense, I did ask."

"Were you checking up on me or something?" Mitch says, wishing his heart didn't do a little backflip at the thought.

John smiles and taps two fingers on the left side of his chest, where the A would be on his jersey. "It's kind of my job to check up on people."

Right. Obviously, dumbass. This isn't some kind of concern booty call, he's just being responsible.

"So…" John says pointedly. "Can I come in?"

Mitch has had exactly five dreams in the last week that started just like this. In none of them was his laptop paused at the part of The Lion King where the floating flower petals supposedly spell out "SEX" because he's spent the last ten minutes trying to hit pause on exactly the right frame, but that's because in his own dreams Mitch is marginally less embarrassing than he is in real life, and spends more time actually _having_ sex and less time reading disney clickbait listicles. Mostly having sex with John, lately. Oh well. It's not like this is going to end like any of the dreams did, anyway. For one thing, Mitch definitely doesn't have any chocolate sauce in his room.

"Sure," he sighs, opening the door properly. May as well get this over with.

And that's when it gets weird.

"Okay," John says as Mitch is closing the door. "How do you want to do this?"

Mitch blinks at him.

"Uh, do what?"

"I mean what's the play, here?" John says, brisk and efficient like he’s talking about a hockey play. "You want me to just jerk you off or something?"

" _Um_ ," Mitch says, his voice at least an octave higher than normal. "Excuse me?"

What he really should be saying is _what the fuck are you talking about_ , but he always goes extra polite when he's freaking out, it's like a reflex, and Mitch is _freaking out_. What the hell is happening right now? Did he fall asleep watching disney movies? Has his subconscious decided to skip over the whole scenario set up and leap right into the middle of the sex dream, like fast forwarding porn until you get to the good part? Or is he having some kind of stress-related hallucination?

John - or the misfiring brain parts that look like John - scratches the back of his neck awkwardly. "Or...sorry," he says, "should we get a drink or something first? I'm probably doing this wrong."

"Uh, _yeah_ ," says Mitch, with a slightly shrill little laugh, "because I have no idea what you're doing? Can you back up a couple of steps?"

John frowns and sits down on the end of Auston's bed. The only light in the room is from the bedside lamp and it washes his face in gold and shadow, making him look more like a beautiful blank faced statue than a normal man. Mitch bites his lip, heart pounding.

"What did Auston tell you, exactly?" he says, because it seems safer than...anything else he could say, like _why do you have to look like that?_ or _is this seriously a concern booty call after all?_

"I asked if he knew what was up with you," says John, "because you seem like you've had something on your mind for a while. And he told me that...you're cursed? Someone put a curse on you when your amulet broke before New Year, and the curse makes you, uh...how did he put it. Want to bone down with someone embarrassing?"

Mitch snorts. He wonders if Auston put it in those terms just for the sheer comedy gold of making John Tavares say "bone down" like that, like he's reading it off a teleprompter in one of those awkward NHL promo videos.

"He also said that the curse can be broken if you _do_ bone--"

"Okay, yeah, you got it," Mitch says quickly. He's alarmingly into the teleprompter voice, as it turns out. Lucky it's because he's cursed or he'd have some stuff to examine right now. He folds his arms. "Little full of yourself to assume it's you though, don't you think?"

John looks confused.

"You got cursed in the Islanders game, right?" he says. Mitch nods. "So...why would one of my old teammates curse _you_ if it didn't have something to do with me?"

Mitch opens his mouth and no brilliant answer comes out of it, so he closes it again. He clears his throat. "Well, you don't know. Maybe I've got...beef with...uh…" John raises his eyebrows. "Hey, I could have enemies!"

"Of course you could," John says tactfully. "Are you saying it's not me?"

Mitch scrunches his face up and wishes he were better at lying, but he's just not. He never has been. "No," he admits, red-faced.

"There's no need to be embarrassed," John says softly, which is...about the most embarrassing thing he could possibly say. "You can't help it."

From anyone else that line would come out unbearably cocky, like _it's not your fault that I'm so hot_ , but John says it so matter of factly in his low, boring monotone that it's actually almost comforting. He's right, Mitch _can't_ help it. He's not responsible for any of this.

"But," John adds, "It's clearly putting stress on you, and ultimately that's bad for your concentration, which is bad for the whole team. So, as your teammate, I think what we need to do from here is really dig in and--"

Mitch can't believe he's actually hearing this. “And what," he blurts out, "Just...have _sex_ for the sake of the team?” John nods. Just one short, efficient little nod. An involuntary laugh of sheer awkwardness hiccups up out of Mitch’s throat. “Wow, they should make you captain for that.”

“Thank you,” says John.

It wasn't meant to be a compliment, but he looks so genuinely flattered to hear it that Mitch feels his resolve melting. He actually means this. This isn't a trick or a prank or anything, he genuinely just wants to help and thinks this is the best way to do it.

What kind of gorgeous, selfless, team player bullshit...

"So," John says carefully, "what do you think?"

"I think you're crazy," Mitch tells him. "But...it's a crazy situation so...maybe crazy is…" Wait, is he seriously considering this? His legs have already carried him halfway to the bed before he notices he's moving, so apparently he is. "Are you sure, dude? You don't have to do this."

John smiles, small but genuine-looking. He doesn't look embarrassed or uncomfortable at all. Like, he's a little stiff, but that's just John, how he always is. "It's fine," he says, and pats the spot next to him on the bed. "Why don't you come here?"

And there doesn't seem to be any good reason not to, so Mitch comes. Not, like, instantly or anything, he's not quite that far gone. It doesn't take long once they get started, though. 

Normally he'd be embarrassed by that kind of thing, but he tells himself it's actually good in this case. Efficient.

*

Mitch is still awake when Auston gets back, lying in bed staring at the ceiling, which is lucky because Auston's the noisiest roommate Mitch has ever had.

"Hey buddy," he says cheerfully, sitting on his bed to kick his shoes off with two aggressive thumps. "How'd it go?"

Mitch rolls over and narrows his eyes at him. "How did what go?"

"Well," Auston says slowly, "JT left early right after I told him about your little problem and how to cure it, sooo…" he raises one eyebrow and smirks obnoxiously.

"How d'you know he's the one who could cure it?" Mitch says petulantly. "I never told you who it was."

"Dude, you didn't have to. Why would someone from the Islanders curse _you_ if it wasn't something to do with _him?_ "

Great. So apparently everyone's a deductive genius tonight. Mitch huffs and rolls back onto his back while Auston starts undressing for bed.

"Did you do any curse breaking, then?" he says conversationally as he hangs up his suit bag on the back of the door, clearly utterly delighted with this whole humiliating situation. Mitch heaves a long sigh. 

"Yes and no."

"What does that mean?"

"It means," says Mitch flatly, "it didn't work."

Auston looks up from rummaging in his suitcase for pyjamas and frowns at him. "And what does _that_ mean?"

"Exactly what I said," Mitch says irritably. "It didn't fucking work."

"Well did he…?" Auston doesn't seem to be able to say the words out loud so he just does the universal hand signal for jerking off.

"Yeah," Mitch says. "Until I…" he does an equally evocative hand gesture, complete with sound effects. "But it didn't _work_ , the curse isn't broken. I just spent the whole time he had his hand on my dick staring and thinking about kissing him, and then after it was over I still wanted to kiss him, so I'm still _fucking cursed_." He thumps his head dramatically against the pillows.

"Okay that was...graphic, so thanks for the visual," Auston says, wincing. "But like...I don't know, maybe that's the problem? Maybe you were supposed to, uh, give in to all your urges or whatever."

"Valeriya never said anything about kissing!" Mitch says, a little hysterically. "It was supposed to be just...he gets me off one time, and then I never have to think about fucking him again, like a normal teammate! Now it's _worse_ , because I know what it feels like when he--"

"Alright alright alright," Auston interrupts loudly. He looks about ten seconds away from sticking his fingers in his ears and going _la la la_. "I get the picture, still cursed, not chill. Did you _tell_ him it didn't work?"

Mitch sighs. He should've, probably, but it never really seemed like the right moment for it. At first he thought maybe it was just, like, aftershocks, the way his eyes kept drifting back to John's mouth even after he'd started to come down. John sticks his tongue out a little when he's concentrating. It's kind of a distracting detail to notice when someone's jacking you off in a just bros kind of way, so Mitch thought maybe it was just that, a weird little quirk that was drawing his eye. But his own mouth felt all sort of needy and empty the whole time, like he was supposed to be doing something with it, and the feeling didn't go away when John stopped touching him and went into the bathroom to wash his hands. He hasn't been able to stop thinking about it since John left.

"Well, I didn't tell him it _did_ work," he says.

Auston sits down on the edge of his bed and scrunches his face up uncomfortably. He obviously has no idea how to talk about this, but he's trying. Mitch should probably be grateful for that at least. "D'you think you should, like. Talk to him about it?"

Mitch throws an arm across his face. "I don't know," he whines. "It was supposed to be over."

"Yeah," Auston sighs, climbing into bed. "That sucks, dude, sorry. I mean, it's kind of hilarious, but it also sucks."

Mitch can't even hold the hilarious thing against him, because he's pretty sure if their roles were reversed he would not stop milking this situation for laughs until the end of time. Auston's actually been impressively restrained so far.

"It is what it is," Mitch says, and reminds himself so irresistibly of John in that moment that he wants to punch something. "Maybe it'll make more sense in the morning."

He rolls over and switches off the light, and they both fall into silence. 

After a minute or so, Mitch says, "Thanks, by the way."

"For what," says Auston with a yawn. "Telling JT? I thought you'd be pissed about that."

"No, I am," Mitch agrees. "You're an interfering dick. But thanks for lending us your bed before, for the attempted curse breaking. If you keep your feet pulled up you should stay out of the wet spot."

He grins in the dark as Auston makes a soft, disgusted noise. If he's going to be cursed and humiliated, he may as well enjoy it.


	2. Drunk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said this whole thing would be done by the end of May, but life did not cooperate with that so I look like an idiot. Still, I got a chapter done! 
> 
> Content note: as the chapter title suggests, there's some drunkenness in this chapter, and attendant loss of inhibitions.

The gym is a great place to just let go of thinking. That might sound like kind of a meathead thing to say, but seriously, apart from mid-actual-game working out is like the only time Mitch's brain ever switches off, and he's got a lot of thoughts he'd really like to put on mute right now. Plus, the gym has the benefit of not smelling great when it's full of sweaty guys, so Mitch should be safe from any lust curse fantasies for an hour or two at least. Cardio, lifting heavy shit, working up a good clean sweat with the boys, there's nothing sexy about any of that, thank god.

"If you're going to offer to spot someone," Auston grunts at him from the bench, "you're supposed to actually watch them, not just stand there staring at JT's ass."

Mitch flinches and tears his eyes away from where John's doing pullups on the other side of the room.

"I wasn't," he protests. He was staring at his shoulders, actually, thank you very much. It turns out John's got a crazy amount of qualities and attributes to admire now, gym smell or no gym smell. It's a problem. Auston rolls his eyes as Mitch's gaze drifts back across the room.

Actually, his form is really good - John's, that is. Mitch is finding it hard to completely separate the magical _want to do you_ feelings from the totally ordinary _want to be you_ feelings. They're all mixed up together, muddled and confusing. Like, sometimes he can almost forget he's cursed because thinking your teammate's body is killer isn't really all that weird, and then he remembers sitting real close to that body and listening to John's steady, even breathing and being intensely aware of the smell of his shampoo and the way his expression didn't even flicker while Mitch was coming in his hand and...that's probably around where the normal admiration ends, yep.

Auston heaves a long suffering sigh and racks his weight, sitting up, and Mitch gives him a speculative look. Matts' body is sick as well, obviously. It's really not that weird to notice. Mitch tilts his head to one side and tries to see Auston in that _other_ way, imagines biting the meaty side of his neck or something, but... it just seems like a super awkward thing to do, not hot at all. That's a relief, in a way, because Mitch isn't sure he could cope with more of that shit, but it also drives home what he already knew: it's not just an appreciation-gone-wrong thing, with John. He's still cursed as fuck.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" says Auston. "Like you just smelled something bad?"

"No reason," Mitch says innocently. "If you want to do more I'm good. Promise. I'll pay attention this time." The fact that John's finished his set and is heading for the stationary bikes, which are out of Mitch's line of sight, has got nothing to do with it. If he can just keep his back to John for the rest of the session he'll be fine. Just stay away from the bikes. Easy.

"I'm done," Auston says dryly. "Which you would know if you'd listened to me at all instead of...whatever you were doing. Bikes?"

Crap.

"Hell yeah, let's do it," Mitch says, too enthusiastically. He's overcompensating, smiling too hard to be strictly normal. Be more fucking normal, Marner.

“D'you think you can control yourself?" Auston grins as he stands up and stretches both arms above his head. "This is a public place, Marns, nobody needs to see your magic boner."

"I literally hate you, you know that?" Mitch shoots back cheerfully. Auston laughs.

The thing is, since the only method he knows for breaking the curse didn't work, it looks like he's just going to have to wait it out. He hasn't gone back to the bench witch yet to see if there's something she forgot to tell him, or if she knows any other curse breaking stuff he could try, but he's not about to ask John to go through all that again anyway. He can't stop thinking about doing it again, but it's…it's way too much to actually ask. It shouldn't last too much longer, right? Valeriya did say they weren't strong spells. It feels like it's gotten worse since they hooked up in Jersey but that's probably just Mitch's imagination.

Anyway, he can control himself, geez. It's intrusive, the way the curse draws his eye in John's direction every time they're in the same room, the way it's been peppering his sleep with dreams that are very vivid and not at all bros, but he's a grown up. When you think about it, it's actually kind of like that lecture they got at prospects camp about girls and being respectful and whatever. He's just not going to make the curse John's problem.

Also he really doesn't want to give Auston any more reasons to smirk at him like he's doing right now.

To show how completely in control he is, cursed or not, Mitch marches over to the bikes and takes the one right next to John. He shoots Auston a pointed look over his shoulder, just to say: this is sports, Matthews. There's nothing horny about sports.

He even greets John when he gets there, super casual, just a lazy; "Hey." John's too busy with his cardio routine to answer but he jerks his chin in this friendly kind of way. He's going pretty hard already, breathing a little shortened, face flushed. Mitch doesn't feel any kind of way about that, it's just an observation. He's observant.

Anyway, he gets on his own bike and focuses on his own shit. Auston doesn't try and chirp him again now John's, like, right there within earshot, because even if he's a dick he's not a complete monster. It's fine. This is going to be fine.

Except…

Okay, Mitch kind of wishes he'd brought headphones or something for this bit. Being respectful and keeping his horniness to himself is all well and good, but he's just cycling away, minding his own business, trying not to think about curses or real life stress or what anyone else is doing, because comparison is the thief of...something, he can't remember how that phrase goes. And here's John within arm's length of him huffing and panting like he's trying to win the Tour de France. It's _distracting_.

Is he just a super loud cycler, or is the curse making Mitch ultra sensitive? Whatever it is, he's impossible to ignore, and the more Mitch notices his heavy breathing the more it makes him think of...well, you know. Other situations that might make him breathe heavy like that.

And he notices other stuff too. The tension in his forearms. The strength of his hands on the handlebars. Mitch is a lot more intimately acquainted with those hands now, with John's capable grip. Shit, okay, he's not supposed to be thinking about that.

John's breathing in time with the rhythm of his legs, and Mitch finds himself falling into sync with him, completely by accident, keeping pace. His pulse picks up and he can't tell if it's the workout or the way he can't stop thinking about his Jersey hotel room, of how calm and methodical John was while Mitch's heart was jackrabbiting out of his chest. Something about John being all cool and focused while Mitch was falling apart had made the whole thing feel simultaneously ten times hotter and more embarrassing at the time, but now...when Mitch closes his eyes for five ill-advised seconds his whole brain fills up with the sound of John panting in time with his own breathing and it feels…it's so...

"Uh, actually, I'm not feeling this," he announces loudly, jerking to a stop. "I'm gonna...go for a run? Outside? Or something." His heart's pounding, way too hard for the work he's actually done. The others don't even lose stride for a second, but John looks up with this questioning little frown. Mitch has to turn away. What did he do to deserve this?

He books it out of the gym before anyone can say anything.

In spite of what people might think about hockey players, Mitch has never once jerked off in a gym shower in his life. Today's the first time. It’s about as awkward as he would’ve expected, hunched over himself in the shower stall with the water running in his eyes while he grits his teeth and tries not to make any incriminating sounds. 

In a detached kind of way, like part of his brain has bailed on what he’s doing and is keeping a tasteful distance, he wonders what in the actual fuck the Islanders witch was trying to achieve by cursing him with _this_. If it’s to get back at John for leaving, it’s not like John's the one who's actually suffering. And anyway, he was _right there_ on the ice when the amulet broke. It seems unfair that Mitch is the one jacking it in the bathroom like a randy high schooler. If the witch is pissed at John, why couldn’t he have just cursed _him?_

Like, obviously he wouldn’t want anyone to give John dangerously bad luck or make it so he can’t ever sleep or whatever. He wouldn’t want him to be actually hurt. But if it’s gotta be like this why is it Mitch who has to suffer through the disgrace of...of getting turned on by cycling?

He wouldn’t make it hard on John or anything, if the tables were turned. He’d totally help out with breaking the curse, because that’s teamwork. He’d make it good, too. He'd find out exactly how John likes to be touched and draw it out until he was begging for it. He’d—

The illusion of pretending he's not doing this, not actively fantasising about his teammate, dissolves like the soap suds sliding down the drain under his feet. Screwing his eyes shut and swallowing down the last of his dignity, Mitch just gives into it. It's not like anyone has to know.

Of course, then he emerges from the shower and finds John in the locker room, towelling the sweat off the back of his neck, and all the fantasies Mitch just spent the last twenty minutes guiltily indulging suddenly feel like they're written all over his face. Like if John looks at him he's going to know exactly what he's thinking, and what he's been _doing_ , and...oh god. He feels bright red.

"Everything alright?" John asks mildly.

"Yup," Mitch says, not looking at him. "Great sesh." He grabs a shirt out of his bag and pulls it over his head, willing the guilty butterflies in his stomach to calm the fuck down. "Feeling awesome." 

It occurs to him that pointedly not looking at John while he frantically dresses himself like he's desperate to run away is probably not the best way to convey that everything's normal, so he forces a deep breath and makes himself sit down. Then, even harder, he makes himself look up at John and smile. It feels a little manic. John looks at him.

"You're still cursed,” he says. It’s not a question.

"I don't know what you're talking about," says Mitch, who is definitely not fixating on how John's voice sounds lower and rougher after working out, not at all. God, he _just_ finished jerking off, you’d think his dumbass cursed libido could give him like five minutes of peace.

"Your uh, shirt's on inside out," John points out. "And you're trying to put that shoe on the wrong foot."

Mitch drops his shoe on the floor.

"Okay." John does this serious frowny face and nods, like he's just been asked a difficult interview question. "The uh, cure didn't work, then. Do you want to try again?"

"What, here?" Mitch croaks, going red all over again. He's pretty sure he's gonna need some recovery time before he can go again, but he stops himself before he can say that out loud.

"Uh, no," John says, looking bemused. "This is a locker room. I meant later. You could come to my house, if you want. Tonight?"

He is seriously never going to get used to John's relentless efficiency about this stuff, scheduling handjobs like he's making a dentist appointment.

"Right," Mitch says, mouth gone all dry and sticky. "Sounds...great."

*

John doesn't have a downtown condo, he lives in one of those big fancy houses in Forest Hill, this fake tudor looking thing that's kind of old fashioned on the outside and alarmingly neat and white on the inside. It looks like the sort of place that should have a wife and a dog and two-point-five perfect angelic kids waiting in it, the sort of place where you have to take a bottle of wine when you go visit, to be polite to the hostess.

Mitch has been here once before, when John invited everyone over for this whole “meet the new guy” team bonding barbecue thing back in September, but it still feels like a display home when Mitch follows him from the big foyer into the living room. He’s half afraid to touch anything in case he gets it dirty somehow.

Getting to know your new teammate is kinda different from a black magic booty call.

“Have you eaten?” John asks. “Can I get you anything?”

Mitch stuffs his hands in the pocket of his hoodie and shakes his head. “Nah, I’m good,” he says. He hasn’t actually had dinner yet, but he’s not expecting to be here that long. It’s not a date, whatever the curse butterflies in his stomach want him to think.

They sit down on the couch, side by side. It’s a huge couch but they both sit right in the middle, so close their knees are almost touching. It's one of those extra soft cushiony couches so Mitch feels like they're sort of falling towards each other. He tries to act normal but it feels like he's failing.

"I've been thinking," John says conversationally, as if none of this is weird at all. "About who might have cursed you."

"Oh, yeah?" Mitch says, grabbing at a normal conversation topic with relief. Well, normal-ish.

"Honestly, I can't think of anyone," John shrugs. "Maybe that's naive of me but...they're all good guys. I can't imagine anyone I played with doing this. And I never knew of anyone on the team being a witch when I was there, anyway. Everyone always had an amulet."

Mitch frowns. "What does that have to do with it?"

"You know, because you can't do magic with an amulet on," John says, as if this is something obvious that everyone knows. "They're magic dampeners, that's how they work."

Mitch has no idea how amulets, or any kind of magic things, work, which is pretty much his ideal level of knowledge when it comes to anything witch-related. Magic makes him uncomfortable. That's why his temporary amulet seems to irritate his skin so much; the magic spell or whatever it is that makes it work is just...it's unnatural. He left it in the car earlier because he figured things were going to be uncomfortable enough in here without a badly calibrated amulet on top of everything else, but now he's a little worried John's going to read something into it if he notices it's missing.

“Maybe it’s one of the new guys,” he says, shifting on the couch. "Don't they have a new goalie? Goalies are all...you know. Weird."

He's just looking for something - anything - to say, but actually he thinks he's made a good point without meaning to. The Leafs don't have a witch on the actual team, but if he was going to put a bet on anyone it'd be Freddie. Like, Mitch can totally picture him cursing someone for pissing him off. And he was near the Islanders goal when his amulet broke...

"Maybe," John says, but he doesn't sound convinced. He frowns at the wall for a moment, while Mitch tries not to fidget, and then shrugs. "Ah well. If we break the curse then I guess it won't matter."

He puts his hand on Mitch's knee and Mitch jumps.

"Sorry," they both say at the same time. They laugh. It kind of lightens the tension, if only for a moment.

"It’s just…" Mitch says, "this is still a little weird."

"A little," John agrees with a small smile. Then he says something Mitch was not even slightly preferred for: "So, given the handjob didn't work, should I try going down on you this time?"

His ability to come out with these truly wild suggestions like he's talking about what to have for dinner is really something. Mitch makes a choking noise and then hears himself say, as if from a long way off, "Sure, if you want."

Sure? If you _want??_ That's his response? He definitely did not give his mouth permission to say that.

So that's how Mitch finds himself, a few awkward fumbling minutes of arranging clothing and positions later, sitting on this stupid white couch in this stupid white display home living room biting his lip so hard it's going to leave marks while John sucks his dick like it's his job. He doesn't mean expertly, although he's definitely starting to think John's done this before, but more like...disciplined. No inefficient movements or noises. He's a machine on and off the ice.

He can't find anywhere to look that doesn't make him feel like he's going to explode. Looking down at John's neatly groomed head moving between his legs, obscenely businesslike, is definitely out. But looking at the unadorned white walls and the curtains feels just as crazy, and if he's not careful he catches sight of his own reflection in the black mirror of the widescreen TV on the wall and that's...absolutely the worst. The way John looks from behind, kneeling in front of him with his broad back filling the space between Mitch's knees and the nape of his neck all exposed, it's almost too good to comrephend.

Mitch doesn't know what to do with his hands. Whether he should reach out and touch or if that would make it weirder, more like they're actually hooking up for real, so he keeps his hands clenched into fists on the couch cushions like he's at a strip club. Mitch has been to a strip club exactly once in his life, when he was tagging along with Chris and his friends the summer after the draft and they thought it'd be funny to sneak Chris' baby bro the brand new Maple Leaf into a club and get him a lap dance, but it was simultaneously the hottest and more awkward experience of Mitch's life. This is a lot like that, but even more intense.

He's aware his brain is going into some kind of aimless death spiral right now because it can't handle what's actually happening, but he's just going to go with it. Fuck, this is so weird.

John pulls off and says, "You know, this will probably go quicker if you relax."

"I'm relaxed," Mitch says through gritted teeth, staring at the wall.

"Right," John says slowly. He sits up a little. "Do you want me to stop?"

Mitch makes the mistake of actually looking at him, then, right at his face. He's frowning, his dark brows drawn in close together, and his mouth looks red and soft and wet, and Mitch has honestly never been so turned on before. He feels like he's losing his mind.

"No," he says automatically, honestly. "Not ever. That's kind of the problem."

"Oh. Not--" John blinks a few times. For the first time Mitch thinks he looks a little flustered, but it only lasts a moment "Well, you're cursed, so that...makes sense. Um. I don't mind if you enjoy it."

"I feel like I'm not supposed to," Mitch confesses. "Because we're...you know. Bros."

"It's still a blowjob," John reasons. And you can't get more logical than that. Mitch wants to check if he's sure it's okay, he definitely doesn't mind, but at this point John's been kneeling on the floor for a while and it's probably getting uncomfortable, so he reaches out and brushes his hair back instead. It feels like an odd thing to do as soon as he's done it, but he bites back the instinctive apology.

"Okay," he says, trying to sound calmer than he feels. "Better get on with it then."

John looks at him a little funny, but Mitch isn't sure what the look on his face means. And then he gets on with it, and Mitch doesn't have enough coherent thought left to worry about anything anymore.

"You've done that before," he says later. It comes out kind of accusatory, which isn't what he meant, but at the same time...you'd think that sort of thing might have come up the first time, right? Don't worry about me freaking out about this, dude, I'm no stranger to getting a guy off. Or. Something like that. John sits down on the couch next to him and gives him a guarded look.

"Or I'm just very adaptable," he says cautiously. He looks tense, like he's expecting Mitch to be the one who freaks out, which is…

Mitch looks around the big sterile living room and slowly starts to connect some things. Like...no wife and kids. Knows how to go down on a guy. Professional hockey player. Mitch may not be the most perceptive person but he gets there in the end. Breaking a curse is one thing, but...

"I don't care if you have," he says quickly. "Or, if you do. Gay shit, I mean. It's fine with me."

"Thank you," says John, kind of dryly, but he looks less tense now too. "It's uh, bi shit in my case. But it's been a while."

"Well, you can't tell," Mitch babbles. "You're still really good at it."

He feels a bit panicky at getting this personal, which is stupid, because letting someone blow you is already pretty fucking personal, but just...he already feels like he's intruded into John's life too much as it is. But John blinks at him, and then laughs and says thank you again, and he kind of blushes a bit. And the way the blushing makes Mitch's insides swoop makes it crystal clear that he's not going to be able to stop intruding any time soon, so. The curse is still going strong.

Maybe the bench witch was just wrong about orgasms. Maybe she was just _messing_ with him.

 _That's_ a nasty thought. It drops into his head and sticks there, and it gnaws away at him when he leaves John's house and goes home, weaves in and out of his unsettled dreams all night. What if that whole "just have him get you off and you'll be cured" thing was a joke and he took it too seriously? What if he's been making John do all this stuff under false pretenses, and he didn't even know it?

It hardly bears thinking about. He _really_ needs to know who this fucking witch is.

*

When he FaceTimes Marty, like he probably should've done weeks ago, it’s Syd who picks up the phone.

“Hey dipshit,” she says sweetly, “he’s in the shower.”

“Sounds hot,” Mitch shoots back, “pass him the phone.” 

Syd snorts and sticks her tongue out at him.

"Why are you like this," she says and settles into the couch, ready for a long chat. It's familiar and nice, but Mitch can't forget what he's actually calling for. Syd asks about his mom and chats about how weird it was to be back in Toronto a couple weeks ago - weeks that feel like months, to Mitch - and Mitch fidgets and gives her one or two word answers, pacing around the apartment impatiently while they wait for Marty. How long does it take to have a damn shower, anyway?

After his third pass through the kitchen, Syd gives him this shrewd look and says, "Hey, what's on your mind, kid? You seem weirder than usual."

Mitch and Syd's relationship is mostly friendly antagonism with an undercurrent of, like, you're important to someone I love so you're pretty fucking important to me too but I'm never going to admit it, and that's always worked for them. Mitch isn't sure he wants to add his awkward, embarrassing sexual exploits to their typical conversations about dogs and Game of Thrones and playfully fighting over who Marty likes better. But while he hesitates, working out how to deflect the question, she narrows her eyes at him like a shark scenting blood in the water.

"Spill," she demands. Jax jumps up on the couch next to her and makes the worried huffing noise that means he's recognised Mitch's voice and wants to know where he is, and Mitch suddenly misses all three of them so much his stomach hurts.

But he's not going to say that to Syd, because that's not what they're about. So instead he just shrugs and says, "It's not a big deal. You don't know any witches do you?"

Syd raises her eyebrows. "Are you looking for a spell or something? You guys have a team witch, don't you?"

Mitch makes a face. As if he needs more magic in his life. " _No_ , I meant like...just. Do you know any normal people who are witches. Not professionally or anything. Like…" he pauses so it sounds like he's trying to think of an example. He doesn't want to set off any red flags that'll get back to the witch, so he needs to be subtle getting information out of her. Sneaky. "I don't know, one of the girls you hang out with. Or guys on the team, even?"

"That's a weird question," says Syd, scritching Jax behind the ears. Okay, so maybe he's not that sneaky.

"It's not that weird," Mitch says defensively. "All kinds of people could be witches. There's no way to tell just by looking at them."

"Okay…" she tilts her head at him. "But why do you want to know? Do you want some tips on how to talk to witches or something?" Her face suddenly lights up. "Ooh, do you have a _crush_ on a witch?"

"Listen, do you know any witches or not?" Mitch scowls. He's not sure whether she's excited about him being into some hypothetical witch because she wants him to get a date or because she wants to mock him about it. Either way it's not getting him any closer to the information he actually needs.

"Nope," says Syd, shrugging.

"It might not be a girl, you know," he tries. "Dudes can be witches. Even, like, hockey players could be witches."

"I feel like you're fishing for something," she tells him, frowning. "But I don't know what. Anyway, again, no, I don't know any witches. Not even dude witches. I think they're pretty much just like normal people, though, if that helps." She looks over her shoulder and calls, "Hey babe? D'you know any witches?"

"Witches?" says Marty. He walks into frame with wet hair and a confused expression "No? Why?"

"Forget it," Mitch sighs. He gives up on pacing, walks into his room and throws himself down on the bed, deflated. Sneaky detective work just isn't his thing. "What's new with you guys, anyway?"

*

A week later Mitch is no closer to being curse free or to working out who's responsible. It's easy enough to keep his distance from John at home, keep opportunities to be weird at him to a minimum, but now they're on the road again and distance is basically zero.

See, post-game partying on the road is never John's scene, and yet here he is _again_ in Sunrise, wedged into the booth between Mo and Brownie drinking one single light beer and completely ruining Mitch's life. It's not enough for him to look, like, _criminally_ good, all relaxed and smiling and laughing helplessly at whatever dumb story Mo and Gards are telling in tandem next to him, he keeps mindlessly toying with the beer bottle in his hands, running his fingers up and down it, and Mitch is _struggling_.

Really, getting drunk was his only option.

"You okay there, buddy?" Auston says, amused, as Mitch reels into him on the way back from the bar, sloshing his drink everywhere.

"Mmhm," Mitch says tipsily. He shakes the vodka and coke off his fingers. "Better than ever. How're you?"

And it's true, for the moment. Right now Mitch is feeling pretty much invincible, which is why he thinks it's a good idea to pat Auston on the shoulder and then stumble back to the table where the other guys are sitting. He drapes himself into the booth and his head ends up on John's shoulder, totally by coincidence. It's not his fault John's sitting there. It's John's fault. Everything's John's fault. Mitch likes him anyway. God, he smells good. Mitch looks at his drink and discovers it's somehow half empty already.

"We should do shots," he announces loudly to the table, basically in John's ear. "Who wants to do shots with me?"

"Jesus Christ," Mo says.

"Think you've had enough, buddy," John says, lightly enough, but he puts his hand on Mitch's knee under the table. Mitch isn't sure if it's supposed to be a comfort or a warning. He slides off John's shoulder and sprawls over the table so he can squint up at him with one eye closed.

"You know, peeling the labels off your drinks is a sign of sexual frustration," he tells him, slurring slightly. "I read that once."

John's face does something Mitch is too drunk to interpret and Mo and Gards both crack up on the other side of the table.

"Oh yeah," Jake chimes in, "I've heard that too, actually. You really should do something about that, Johnny."

Mo shakes his head, grinning, "It's not healthy to keep everything bottled up, man."

Jake giggles and slaps him on the arm. "Ha, _bottled_ up," he says, and they both lose it again. Mitch laughs too, because he totally started that, and making people laugh is his third favourite feeling in the world, after scoring goals and the way John's hand feels on his knee right now. John presses his lips together, drawing Mitch's eye to his mouth, and he thinks...okay, maybe fourth favourite feeling.

"Thanks for the concern, fellas," John says dryly. He gives Mitch another hard-to-read look and says, "I'm cutting you off. And I'm going to make sure you get back to the hotel safely."

"Aw, what?" Mitch whines. "Noooo I'm having fun." Mostly he just doesn't want John to stop touching him, and he will if they get out of the booth. Wow, this curse thing is way harder to keep in check when he's drunk. He probably should've seen that coming.

"A little too much fun," John says sternly, which is hotter than it has any business being. "We've got an early flight tomorrow."

His hand is heavy and warm through Mitch's jeans and Mitch can only think about how much more fun he could be having, if John was taking him back to the hotel in a sexy type way and not in a responsible grown up way. And then he remembers those kind of thoughts are supposed to be off limits, given that they're, you know, caused by black magic and all. His drunk brain is all swirly with guilt and desires that don't match, and it's dizzying. He puts his head in his arms and groans.

"Come on," John says firmly, nudging him out of the booth. "I'm calling an Uber. You'll thank me in the morning."

Mitch isn’t all that sure how they get back to the hotel. He knows he falls asleep during the ten minute Uber and wakes up with his head on John’s shoulder again, knows he tries really hard to look sober as they walk through the lobby and then trips over the edge of the lift and falls literally into John’s arms. That bit’s nice, and _funny_ ; he laughs until he can’t stand on his own and John has to half carry him back out of the lift again.

He’s kind of expecting a lecture, but it doesn’t happen. John's grimly quiet the whole time. That might actually be worse than being lectured.

“Are you mad at me?” Mitch asks. It’s a little whiny, feels embarrassingly high school, but whatever. He’s suddenly seized with the whiplash urgency of drunkenness; he needs to know, right now, that they’re okay.

“No,” John says curtly. Which...sounds a lot like a yes, actually. Mitch winces and his drunk mood takes an abrupt nosedive from invincible into maudlin.

"Sorry. I know I...sorry, I'm too much sometimes," he says, scrubbing a hand over his face. "I’m sorry."

John’s expression softens slightly. He shakes his head. “Just...sometimes I don’t know if I want to punch you or if I—“ He cuts himself off.

“You’re not in a punching mood right now, are you?” Mitch jokes.

John doesn’t answer, but he makes a huffy little noise that _might_ be a laugh. That seems encouraging. They get to Mitch and Auston’s room and Mitch fumbles for his key card; he tries to open the door three times before dropping the card on the floor.

“Fuck,” he giggles, and slumps against the wall as John picks it up and opens the door. Everything’s funny again, and also awful and all soft around the edges, and when John gets the door open Mitch kind of collapses into him, making them both stumble into the room.

“Oof,” John says. The door swings shut heavily and they’re lit only by the street lights through the open curtains. His arm going around Mitch might be the only thing holding him up. “Are you okay?”

"No, don't be like that, don't be nice," Mitch mumbles, scrunching his face up against John’s shoulder, even though he was begging him to be nice a minute ago. "You're too nice, I can't handle it. You have no idea how good you _smell_ right now." John's throat is right there in front of his face and it takes all Mitch's self control not to _lick_ him; he doesn't have any restraint left to spare so he presses his face into the curve of his neck instead. When John laughs in surprise, it makes his skin buzz.

"You're...really drunk," he says. It sounds fond, which is definitely alcohol-fuelled wishful thinking, because Mitch is being the most unbelievably annoying messy asshole right now. But he can't help it.

"I'm really _cursed_ ," he whines into John's shoulder. "You should kiss me."

"Ah," John says, going still. He doesn't do anything for a moment, and Mitch wonders if he's finally tipped him over into that punching mood after all, but then he says, cautiously, "You mean to break the curse?"

Mitch has no idea whether kissing could break the curse. That sounds like some deeply cheesy fairytale shit, honestly, and probably not true, especially not when a handjob and a blowjob have both failed. But he really, _really_ wants John to kiss him.

“Yeah," he says, feeling breathless. "Exactly.”

Look, he's not proud of it. Well, he's drunk, so he is a little bit proud of it, but he knows on some level that it's probably, you know. Wrong. Then John gives him this look, this kind of indulgent, exasperated look, and touches his chin with just the tips of his fingers.

"Hey," he says seriously. "We're in this together, I've told you. You don't have to get drunk to ask for help. Just talk to me next time, please." And Mitch is just wondering whether it'd wreck the mood to start singing _we're all in this together_ when John kisses him.

It's a pretty weak excuse for a kiss. Just a firm, dry press of lips, over so quickly Mitch doesn't even get around to closing his eyes. He wonders if he should say something - something like...thanks, bud, but that's not quite what I meant - but John seems to self-evaluate all on his own and goes in for another attempt. Is there a thing like hockey sense but for making out? Kinda like that. He strokes his fingertips up over Mitch's jaw, just lightly, like he's reminding him to stay still, and then tries again.

Being kissed by John Tavares, really kissed for real, is...somehow a lot like doing hockey drills with him? Which is a bizarre thought to have, but he's so...focused about it. Methodical. Very, very thorough. It kind of feels like he learned how to kiss by doing a course in it, but he absolutely came out top of the class.

Mitch is _wildly_ into it.

John slides his hand around to cup the back of Mitch's head and Mitch feels like all his bones are dissolving. No, wait, that isn't metaphorical, he is actually falling over. He's so wrapped up in the kissing he's forgotten how legs are supposed to work. Luckily there's something soft right behind him - the bed, he remembers belatedly - and when his knees give out he manages to collapse semi gracefully onto the edge of it, holding onto John's arms as he goes. John doesn't even break the kiss as he sits down next to him.

"How was that?" he asks, when they come up for air. He sounds like he's asking if he got a pass to land where Mitch wanted it, like he's waiting for a critical evaluation. Mitch wants to laugh. He wants to kiss him again. His head is still spinning. It doesn't seem like there’s any point in trying to keep himself upright anymore so he flops back onto the bed.

"Still cursed,” he says. And then he adds, “You could do literally anything you want to me right now," because his drunk brain is a goddamn disaster area. John's eyebrows go up and Mitch flings an arm across his eyes to hide his face.

"Uh, wow. That's...”

“Gross?” Mitch supplies. “That's totally not bros?”

“That's a lot of responsibility,” says John.

Mitch swallows a laugh. "Good thing you're so responsible," he says, not meaning it at all. 

It feels like he’s flirting, which… feels _weird_ , but it's also weird to feel weird about flirting with someone who just had his tongue in your mouth, so...Mitch doesn't know what to think.

"You're so good," he sighs. Vodka and magic have well and truly taken the wheel and what little self respect he has left is just watching helplessly from the back seat, at this point. "Why are you so good? Is there anything you're not good at? Like, serious question."

John thinks about it for a second. "I'm not great at accepting compliments," he says slowly, completely deadpan.

Mitch lifts his arm and squints up at him. He can't tell if that's supposed to be a joke. John looks back at him blankly for a long time, and then smiles, small and sheepish, and Mitch's heart does this whole dramatic clenching thing about it. He's so, so cursed.

They just look at each other like that for a moment. Mitch can't tell what John's thinking, but what he's thinking is that he wants to reach out and touch John's hand where it's resting on the bedspread. Like, reassuringly. Companionably. Friendly-like, you know. He's just not sure if it'll come across the right way. Like, he's cursed, but you can be cursed with barely controllable lust and still _like_ someone, still care about your buddy's feelings, you know? After what feels like an hour of hesitating, he stretches his hand out in John's direction, but John looks away and stands up before he can make contact.

"Alright," John says briskly. "I'm going to go. Make sure you drink water before you fall asleep, alright?"

"I _have_ been drunk before," Mitch says, frowning and dragging his arm back over his face. He feels annoyed, for some reason. Disappointed, although he can't put his finger on what he's disappointed about. " _You_ drink water."

John chuckles, and gives Mitch's foot this friendly little nudge with his own. "Okay," he says. "See you at breakfast."

He shuts the door so quietly as he leaves, and Mitch falls asleep fully dressed, on top of the covers, thinking about holding John's hand.


	3. Cursed?

When Mitch gets out of the shower he realises he never took his amulet off before falling asleep last night. He also realises it’s broken.

It doesn’t look dramatic. When his real amulet broke the damage was obvious, the whole thing looked shattered, and this is just a single crack branching across one side of the big round medallion. But it’s definitely broken, and this time Mitch doesn’t remember noticing it break at all.

It could be like when you break your phone screen, he thinks as he pulls it on over his head. Like, if you drop your phone and the whole screen just smashes it’s totally unusable, but if it’s just a little crack then you can pretty much ignore it, right? The phone still works. So maybe this amulet’s fine. He must have just knocked it on something sometime yesterday and forgot. He was pretty drunk.

Not drunk enough to forget everything, though. He bites his lip, fighting a smile.

“You’re in a good mood,” says Auston. It sounds kind of like an accusation, but that’s just because he hasn’t had his coffee yet. It’s an early flight home, so they’ll have breakfast on the plane instead of at the hotel, but that means Auston’s going to be a bitch about it all the way to the airport.

Mitch shrugs. “I guess,” he says. “Life’s good, you know?”

“Is it?” Auston yawns. He jams a hat over his bed hair and makes for the door, dragging his suitcase. “Is that whole curse situation over, then?”

In the corridor, someone steps out three doors down, and Mitch doesn’t even have to look to know it’s John. He hasn’t even been in John’s room on this trip, it’s just the curse heightening his senses, or giving him an extra one just for knowing where John is at all times. It’s been useful on the ice, but kind of distracting everywhere else. He forces himself to stay cool and not look.

“Uh, not exactly,” he says, noncommittal. “But it’s all good.”

Auston doesn’t respond, and then John catches up to them at the elevator doors and rides down with them, and Auston doesn’t say anything else then either. Mitch feels shifty about it anyway, just a little.

“Morning,” says John, missing the vibe entirely. He hasn’t put gel in his hair yet and it’s all fluffy, which makes Mitch want to run his fingers through it. It looks really soft. He does this wry little almost smile. “You look better than you’ve got any right to after last night.”

Mitch grins. “Well someone gave me this great advice about hydration,” he says. “Works like magic.”

Truthfully, Mitch woke up from a dead sleep at about 2am with a mouth that tasted like ass and finished off the lukewarm half can of Red Bull that he’d left on the bedside table. But John ducks his head with a soft chuckle, and that feels like winning a game Mitch didn’t even know he was playing. God, he should smile more. Like, he smiles, but it’s so great every time, especially when Mitch is the reason. He's low-key trying to make it happen again at all times.

Auston lets out a very dry little cough. Oops. For a second Mitch forgot he was there.

He doesn’t say anything until they get on the bus, where John sits down near the front like always and Mitch tries not to pine too much as Auston bullies him up towards the back where they usually sit. Then he boxes Mitch into the window seat where he can’t see John any more and raises one very meaningful eyebrow at him.

“It’s all good? Really?”

“I mean, yeah,” Mitch says defensively. “I’m cursed, but it’s fine. We’re working on it.”

“You and JT,” Auston says. “Working on it together? Like…”

Mitch wrinkles his nose. Jesus. “I thought you didn’t want all the details.”

“And I thought you said what the witch told you didn’t work,” Auston shoots back. “I figured he’d give up, not start taking you home from bars and flirting with you in elevators and shit.”

“Oh fuck off, we weren’t flirting,” Mitch scoffs. _He_ totally was flirting, but John was just being nice. “He didn’t ‘take me home’ like _that_ , he was just looking out for me being a drunk dumbass. He would’ve done the same for you.”

Probably wouldn’t have kissed Auston like that afterwards, but that’s not the point. It’s not like they really hooked up or anything. The curse doesn’t mean they’re not allowed to be _friends_.

“If you say so,” Auston says infuriatingly.

“I do say so.”

“Just seems like a long way to go for a friend, that’s all,” says Auston, shrugging. “You know, if he’s not getting anything out of it. I’d be making you pay for dinner for the rest of your life, just saying.”

“That’s because you suck,” Mitch tells him. “Just saying.”

He digs his headphones out of the pocket of his coat and pointedly puts them on, looking down at his phone. He doesn’t know what Auston wants from him here. Is he meant to feel bad that John’s a good person, that he’s trying to help? John keeps telling him _not_ to feel bad, so what the fuck is he supposed to do? Auston doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“It’s none of my business,” Auston says, “but I think you should go talk to the bench witch again. Tell her you’re still cursed.”

Mitch leans back in his seat and closes his eyes.

“You’re right, it is none of your business,” he says, and cranks the volume. If Auston’s got anything else to say, he doesn’t hear it.

He has kind of got a point on one thing, though. Not about John flirting with him or any of that crap, that’s insane, but the other stuff. For all the “we’re in this together” talk, everything between them so far has been kinda one sided. Like, obviously John doesn’t want a blowjob or whatever, but Mitch should find _something_ nice he can do for him. To say thank you.

He spends the rest of the trip thinking about it. What would be a nice gesture? An actual gift seems kind of weird, like he’s trying to pay for all the…no, that’s not going to work. If John wants a Rolex or something he can just buy it himself anyway. He could offer to help around the house somehow like…what do those big mansiony houses need, anyway, mowing the lawn? Cleaning out the gutters? Mitch wouldn’t know how to begin cleaning out a gutter, but he could call his dad and ask.

Then again, John probably already pays someone to do all that stuff. He’s, like, adult and responsible. _He_ probably doesn’t just let the mess build up until his mom comes around to visit every few weeks and cleans up the place.

So, okay, home maintenance isn’t the answer. But maybe there is something he can do at home.

“Hey,” he says, touching John’s wrist as they pass each other on the way off the plane back in Toronto. Their fingers brush together as John turns to look at him and Mitch almost loses his nerve; his heart does this lurching thing in his chest when John looks at his mouth first before their eyes meet. Probably just an accident.

“You should come over tomorrow night,” he blurts out before he can talk himself out of it. “Off day and whatever. If you’re not busy, I mean.”

His palms feel all sweaty. He hasn’t really initiated anything that’s happened between them so far, unless you include drunk babbling. Not that he’s initiating anything now either - this is a friends thing, not a curse thing - but it feels like setting himself up to be turned down anyway.

“I’m not busy,” John says, and smiles. Mitch is so relieved he almost laughs out loud.

“Awesome,” he says, grinning back like an absolute maniac. “Me neither.”

“Uh yeah.” John looks gently bemused. “I figured that, since you asked me. Seven o’clock okay?”

Mitch is too happy to be embarrassed, even when the words that spill out of his mouth are totally embarrassing.

“Beautiful. I can’t wait.”

*

The smoke alarm is still going off when John arrives. Mitch abandons everything to answer the door. He's a total mess, all sweaty and flustered and there's salad dressing just...everywhere, he doesn't even know how he managed to get so much dressing on himself just tossing a basic-ass salad.

And then he opens the door and there's John looking like, perfect, with not a hair out of place and a goddamn button down shirt like he's on a first date or something. Mitch wants to climb him like a tree right there in the doorway, and also crawl into a hole and die, a little bit, so it's a great start. Being cursed is a wild ride.

"Hi," John says pleasantly. "Everything okay?"

"Uh," Mitch says, and something in the kitchen takes that moment to fall on the floor with an almighty crash. "Hold that thought," he says, and dashes back to the disaster zone.

The kitchen is in absolute chaos. There are dishes and utensils and packages strewn across every available surface. But worst of all, the salad bowl he'd balanced on the tiny bit of remaining sink is in pieces on the floor, along with all the salad that was previously inside of it. In between the shards of glass are bits of limp lettuce and splatters of even more dressing.

"Fuck," says Mitch emphatically, over the screeching smoke alarm.

He takes a step towards the wreckage, skids in a patch of salad dressing and nearly stacks it on the kitchen floor, but John appears behind him like a guardian angel and catches him in his arms, so at least this night can't get any more humiliating than it already is.

"Oops," says John mildly, setting him upright again. "What happened here?"

"I was trying to make you dinner," Mitch says, blushing. "Didn't go according to plan."

John's eyebrows go up. He looks a little bewildered, but pleased too, despite the utter chaos. 

"Oh," he says. "That's really nice of you." 

Which is really nice of him, all things considered. The smoke alarm's still screaming like a banshee.

John edges past Mitch and around the wreckage on the floor, and turns off the stove burner that Mitch abandoned to answer the door. Then he examines the half scorched chicken breasts in the frying pan. 

"Actually I think we can save this," he says, unbuttoning his shirt sleeves and starting to roll them up. "You deal with the smoke alarm and I'll handle the protein. Did you have any vegetables left over?"

Somehow while Mitch is battling with the smoke alarm and picking up the mess on the floor in front of the sink - John warns him not to cut himself - John manages to fix the chicken, making the burnt bits disappear into the bin, and transforms the bits of food Mitch hadn't yet managed to ruin into a respectable side salad. Mitch sticks to finding the wine glasses his mom insisted he have, and which he's never needed before and will probably never use again, and pouring the wine Mo helped him pick out (he didn't tell Mo who the wine was for, but he's probably going to have to make up an imaginary date later when he asks). Surely he can't fuck that up too badly.

Meanwhile, John's making himself at home in Mitch's kitchen with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, efficiently shuffling pans and plates around with his brow furrowed in concentration. He looks amazing, and he's made a new salad dressing from scratch with oil and lemon juice and...a jar of mustard? Mitch didn't even know he had that. It's possible John conjured it through actual sorcery.

"Are you sure _you're_ not a witch?" Mitch jokes as they carry their plates and glasses to the table. He doesn't realise what he's said until he sees the look on John's face. "Sorry, I didn't mean...just that you made magic happen with this food, man. This whole...curse thing probably isn't what you'd wish for if you had magic powers."

John sits down and smiles awkwardly. "Uh, no. Forcing people to fall in love with me isn't really my style."

Mitch's mouth feels all dry so he takes a gulp of his wine. It doesn't help all that much. 

"Lust," he says. When John just frowns, he clarifies: "Fall in, uh, lust with you. I was told love can't be, like. Faked. With magic."

"Right," John says.

"Not that you'd need to curse people for that anyway," Mitch says quickly, feeling the conversation on the verge of crashing and burning like his attempt at chicken. "I mean, look at you. You're, like, a total catch." 

John makes a soft noise of protest but Mitch barrels on because apparently he's unstoppable. Cool. 

"No, I mean it," he insists. "This isn't just the curse talking, this is like...facts. You're so nice-- I mean, um, cool. To talk to." Okay, bit of a stumble there, but he finds his footing again and gets straight back into it, waving his fork for emphasis: "Sick hockey player, for sure, you'd do anything for a teammate, and you can cook? Plus you’re a fucking specimen, obviously. Like, ten out of ten, would bang." He winces. "I mean, you knew that. But I meant...in a non-cursed, compliment kind of way, you know."

John laughs, but he's not mean about it. He looks a little pink. "Thanks Mitchy. And, you know, you're um. Great too."

Mitch feels his face heat up at that, too, like hearing John tell him he's "um, great" is the equivalent of every compliment he's ever received in his life all coming at once. He wants to do something dramatic about it, like leap up from the table and kiss John right on the mouth or something, but he tamps down those feelings with an overambitious forkful of salad instead. This is meant to be a friendly dinner between buddies. Gotta keep those cursed impulses in check.

They don't talk about the curse, or magic, or witches, or anything heavy after that, though. Slowly Mitch manages to relax, after a second glass of wine and a surprisingly decent meal and the reminder that, yes, actually, before all this shit went down he and John were friends who could have a normal conversation with each other. Sure, John is still hotter than the sun or whatever but it's nice just to talk to him, just two guys hanging out and having dinner. It's totally ordinary, reminds him of going over to Marty and Syd's last year, a little bit. Mitch has missed that.

They take their plates back into the kitchen, and maybe he's a little loose from the wine or just from the uncharged ordinariness of it all, but this feels like a _success_. Like, okay, John kind of had to make his own dinner, and now he's cleaning up while Mitch is half heartedly wiping up salad dressing off the floor with a wadded up paper towel under his foot - John calls him a slob with the fondest look on his face - but it feels good, organic, comfy. Maybe they can watch a movie or play chel or something next. 

John insists on rinsing the plates before they go in the dishwasher, and Mitch tells him that defeats the purpose of having a dishwasher, so John flicks him with water from the tap and Mitch laughs and hip checks him into the sink. When they both stumble, John grabs onto him for balance, and Mitch grabs back automatically and then they're basically nose to nose and then...

He really, honestly didn't plan this. It was just supposed to be dinner.

Mitch couldn't even say for sure who kisses who first, although let's be real, it's probably him. It's just, one moment they're laughing in each other's faces and the next minute he's laughing up against John's mouth, and then he's not laughing anymore; John's arms go around him and Mitch slides both hands up to his shoulders and John's tongue is on its way past his teeth and they kiss like Mitch's most ridiculous dreams, like it's real, like they both mean it.

John doesn't, Mitch knows. He's just being a good teammate, like every other time. And Mitch doesn't _actually_ mean it, it's just dark magic making him think he does. But there's a big, swelling feeling in his chest all the same.

"Sorry," he says breathlessly. "Sorry, s-- I didn't mean--"

John's watching his face, his gaze warm and heavy. Mitch has this teetering, unstable feeling, like he’s about to...he doesn’t know, fall into his eyes or something stupid like that.

"It's alright," John says, soft. "I get it. But since I'm here, should we...?"

Mitch doesn't know why, but he kisses him before he can finish the question. He knows what he was going to say anyway. He doesn't want to talk about the curse.

John seems fine with that, anyway. He kisses back so hard he sounds breathless when he backs Mitch out of the kitchen and then into the wall, lips sliding over his cheek.

"Where's your--"

Oh. Bedroom. Right. Good thing someone's thinking straight, because Mitch's brain is definitely not making any of the decisions.

"This way," he says - forming words feels like a massive effort - and finds John's mouth again. He keeps kissing him all the way to the bedroom; he has to steer because John doesn't know where he's going, and the feeling of backing someone bigger and heavier than him down the corridor should be weird in its newness but it's not, it's awesome. He pushes John against the door frame and presses the whole length of his body against him and feels like a fucking rockstar about it.

"Um," says John.

"What’s wrong?" Mitch says. He doesn’t sound out of breath, which is weird because he feels like he’s been running. His heart’s pounding.

"No, nothing, it's…" John swallows. He's staring at Mitch's mouth, and it's the first time in any of this he's ever seemed unsure. “This is...” he tries again. " _I'm_ not the one who's cursed."

Mitch frowns. “What d’you…” Then John shifts slightly against the wall and Mitch's brain catches up with his other senses; either John's smuggled a rolling pin out of the kitchen or he's more into this whole curse breaking thing than he's supposed to be. Mitch doesn't even think he owns a rolling pin.

He's got the sudden urge to laugh.

“Oh,” he says, fighting to keep a straight face. “Well uh. That’s okay. I mean, I don’t mind if you enjoy it.”

John recognises the callback. He exhales sharply, a nervous sort of half laugh. “Oh, yeah?”

Mitch moves his hand until he’s palming John’s unmistakable hardon through his pants, and John goes still like he’s holding his breath. He's this hard already, just from kissing. Just from kissing Mitch. That's... 

“I mean, it's only sex, right?" Mitch says, trying to be cool and not feeling very cool at all.

“You definitely shouldn’t feel like you have to—”

“I don’t,” Mitch says quickly. “I want— maybe it’ll help. With breaking the curse.”

He doesn’t actually see any good reason why it would help, and from the shaky little laugh John stutters out he’s pretty sure John knows that. But he presses his palm harder against John’s dick and drags his hand upwards again, with purpose, and John does make a noise that time; it’s quiet but it’s broken in the middle and Mitch wants to sear it into his memory forever.

“Can’t hurt,” John says.

In Mitch’s rich and energetic fantasy life of the last cursed month, he’s imagined something like this plenty of times. He’s been very smooth and sexy about the whole thing, too, stripping John’s clothes off him all slow and methodical, drawing out the tension until they're both aching for it.

In real life, he tries to drag John over towards the bed by his belt buckle, trips over the five pairs of shoes that are lying around on the floor from all the times he was too lazy to put them away, and falls flat on his back, clumsily pulling John down on top of him. John narrowly misses kneeing him in the balls.

It goes better after that, though, because even though he's used to sex involving, frankly, fewer dicks than this, he was kind of right about it still being just sex. He doesn't try anything fancy - he can work up to going down or anything else - so really it's basically just like jerking off, only it's John's dick in his hand instead of his own, and John making these bitten off, breathy noises in his ear, and John's mouth open and hot against his cheek, John's arms bracketing his shoulders against the mattress.

Yeah, okay, it's not really that similar. It's hot as fuck, though.

“Better?” John asks him some time later. He's propped up on one elbow, half leaning over him and his face is all flushed and sleepy and beautiful. He's still got his shirt on, sleeves rolled up to the elbow.

“Yeah,” says Mitch, with feeling. “Way better,” and he reaches out to pull him down into another kiss. He's always clingy after sex. A little closeness never feels like enough. John does kiss him, easy and sweet, but then he pulls back with this kind of sheepish little half smile.

“Um,” he says. “Actually I meant...did we break the curse.”

“Oh,” says Mitch. “Then no.”

John’s smile twists ruefully. “Oh well,” he says. “maybe next time’s the one.”

Mitch's stomach does something weird at the way he says _next time_ like it's a foregone conclusion, a feeling that's half anticipation and want and half guilt. It's the guilty part that makes him stay where he is as John sits up on the side of the bed and gets dressed, even though all his other parts want to reach across the bed and pull him back into it.

He can't say he's disappointed with the way the night panned out, but he's not sure his plan to do something nice really came across the way he planned. He gets out of bed and walks John to the front door to see him off, at least. That seems polite.

"Thank you for dinner," John says in the front hallway, in this serious, sincere kind of voice that makes Mitch laugh.

"Sure," he shrugs. "I mean, not every day you get invited over for a meal and have to cook it yourself."

"And do the dishes," says John. That one earns him a punch in the arm. You do _not_ have to rinse dishes before they go in the dishwasher.

"Yeah yeah, worst date ever," Mitch rolls his eyes, but they're both grinning now. "Get the hell out of here."

"See you tomorrow, then," John says, and then he leans in and kisses Mitch on the cheek, and leaves

Oh. Mitch touches his face, staring at the back of the door long after John's closed it behind him. Funny how the lightest touch of the night is the one that lingers.

*

Mitch isn't an idiot, whatever Auston thinks. He knows, on an intellectual level, that none of this is normal. It's not normal to wake up wrapped in sheets that still smell like your teammate and feel comforted by that instead of weirded out. But it doesn't matter what he knows; the curse has its own ideas. He's been fighting it this whole time, but now it feels stronger than ever, like it's sunk deep into his bones.

He doesn't know if it's shampoo or cologne or something else that makes John smell like that - kind of like...worn old wood furniture, but in a sexy way - but god it's good. Mitch could just stay here forever, breathing it in.

Well, not actually, because he's got a game today, but like...it's seriously tempting.

Curses are weird.

He's nearly late for team breakfast because he loses track of time daydreaming in the shower, so when he walks in everyone else is already there. He wouldn't normally sit with John, so he doesn't now, but he automatically scans the room for him anyway, and it's stupid but his chest feels all tight with anticipation. His pulse trips over itself when he finds John already looking back at him.

He looks-- well, he looks amazing, obviously, but kind of questioning and uncertain too, so Mitch flashes him a smile and waves.

"Who're _you_ flirting with?" says Kappy with his mouth full of eggs, turning around in his seat to look.

"Oh, haven't you heard?" Mitch says brightly, sliding into a seat. "Me and Babcock are secret lovers. Guess the secret's out now, you're a fuckin' detective genius. Pass the ketchup." 

John’s too far away to hear any of this but there's a tiny secretive smile on his face as he turns back to his conversation, and Mitch can't help copying it. He's got this warm, soft feeling spreading through his insides. And yeah yeah, it's not _normal_ , yes it's dark witchcraft manipulating his emotions, but at least it feels _nice_ now instead of awkward and embarrassing. 

Kappy looks disgusted. "You couldn't just say mind your own business?"

"Marns doesn't have secrets," Auston says, and then adds in this flat, cynical voice, "Whether you want to know shit or not." It wouldn't sound pointed to anyone else, but Mitch knows better. He ignores him. Auston _probably_ can't tell just from looking at him that he's touched John's actual dick now, but better safe than sorry; Mitch can just imagine what he'd have to say about _that_.

"No. Babs is definitely not allowed to be, like, sexual. Ever," says Travis, scrunching up his nose. "That's like thinking about your dad having sex. No."

"He is a dad though," Willy points out. "So, you know he has, for sure. More than once. Actually he's probably good at it if Mrs Babs keeps going back for more kids."

Kappy drops his fork and puts his head in his hands. "Why are we talking about this."

"You started it," Mitch tells him serenely. And then John laughs at something on the other side of the room, and his attention slides away from the table and anything Kappy says in reply misses him completely.

He taps his fingers idly against the flat surface of the amulet under his shirt and lets the conversation wash over him while the guys do their best to put Kappy off his breakfast. The amulet feels weirdly blank, like an inert piece of metal instead of the stinging, itchy irritant it used to be. Maybe it _is_ broken. Can a curse be strong enough to break an amulet even weeks after it's been cast? He should probably find Valeriya and talk to her about the replacement she's making anyway. John's eyelashes are so long and dark when they're lowered like that. Mitch wishes he'd look at him.

As soon as he thinks that, John looks up.

It should be embarrassing to get caught staring like a creep, but after last night Mitch feels more sure of himself, somehow; bolder. Instead of looking away, he winks, and John blinks and goes all pink.

" _Alright_ , knock it off," Kappy scowls. "I'm sorry I said anything."

As it turns out, Mitch doesn't need to look for the bench witch. There's a traffic jam in the corridor on the way out to the ice, so he pushes his way to the front to see what the holdup is and finds Mo and John holding people back at the mouth of the tunnel. John opens his mouth as if he's about to say something, looks flustered, and then closes it again and just smiles. Mitch smiles back, feeling really dumb and happy all of a sudden.

"Witch is working," Mo explains, jerking his chin towards the ice. He doesn't notice anything of what just passed between Mitch and John "She was supposed to be done before we got here but some wards needed a refresh or something."

Now that he's close enough Mitch can see the witch herself on the other side of the glass, and his giddy happy feeling fades a little. She's holding a jar of some kind of potion in one hand that Mitch doesn't want to look too closely at, probably full of newts' testicles and goat's blood and other creepy shit. As he watches, she dips her fingers in it - gross, Mitch wishes he hadn't thought about newts' testicles - and draws a twisty, complicated symbol on the rink glass. The potion shimmers this unnatural rainbow colour, magical and eerie, and then Valeriya mutters something and it disappears.

Mitch shivers. All the hair's standing on end on the backs of his arms like he's charged with static electricity. The back of his mouth tastes metallic.

"You alright?" John says, soft and concerned.

Mitch forces a smile. "Yeah, fine. Just want to get out there, you know?" He bounces on his skates, swinging his arms restlessly. It doesn't help with the prickly magic feeling, and John frowns.

"Oh, here she comes," says Mo. He and John both move quickly out of the way as Valeriya comes striding off the ice. They're all serious and respectful about it, whereas Mitch just tries to duck behind Mo and avoid eye contact, but the witch singles him out immediately.

"You," she barks. "Come to my office after this. I have something for you."

Travis and Willy both make stupid faces at him from the other side of the tunnel, bug eyed like they desperately want to chirp him about that but they're too afraid of Valeriya to dare do it in front of her. But Mitch is more focused on John, who's smarter than either of them and already knows why he's got business with the team witch. He glances between them now, brow furrowed, then raises a questioning eyebrow at Mitch as Valeriya sweeps away down the tunnel. Right. He's hoping it's about breaking the curse, of course he is.

"Someone's in trouble," Travis sing songs like Mitch has just been sent to the principal's office, and Willy sniggers, but Mitch isn't in the mood for chirps, suddenly. He takes one glove off and gives them the finger but it's routine, his heart's not really in it.

Everyone starts heading out into the arena but John touches his arm, holding him back.

"So," he says in a low voice as the others troop past, "was that about…"

"Don't worry" Mitch says, not looking at him. He feels like a bucket of ice water's been tipped over him, all the warm happy feelings from earlier completely drowned. "I'm going to ask her about the curse, you won't have to worry about it much longer."

He doesn't know what makes him say it like that, all...harsh, like an accusation. John's been nothing but supportive this whole time, never bugged him about getting more help, even after so many failures that he probably should have.

"Okay…"John says slowly. "I was going to say if it's about your new amulet, maybe you should go get it now, not after."

Mitch hadn't even thought about that. But yeah, that probably is what it's about. His shoulders drop a little as some of the tension leaves them, and he wonders where that tension even came from.

"Sorry," he says, glancing sheepishly at John. "I just…"

"You've got a lot going on." John puts a hand on his arm again, brief but comforting, and that's not what Mitch was going to say but he nods anyway. It's true, isn't it? "And listen, about that. I don't want you to worry about, um. Doing extra stuff for me. I don't expect anything like that."

Mitch looks at him. He looks very serious behind his visor.

"Like the dinner and wine and everything?" Mitch says. "Nah, man, that was nothing, just being nice." It wasn't like he'd gone all out or anything, just picked up some groceries and a bottle of wine. He'd spent about ten minutes looking up the salad recipe on google and then fucked it up, nothing all that extra.

"I meant the other stuff."

Oh. Mitch's stomach does this crazy swooping thing, like missing a step going downstairs, but not in a bad way. _That_ stuff. He gives John a little half smile.

"You didn't like the other stuff?" 

John licks his bottom lip, but he doesn't break eye contact. His expression doesn't change but it goes from serious to something different in the space of a heartbeat.

"That's not what I said."

Mitch sucks in a breath and it echoes. He wants to say something, but he can't seem to make words form in his head. He's so entirely focused on John's face, on his body, on the suddenly charged space between them, that basic-ass _words_ seem totally inadequate. He feels like time is frozen. If they tried to kiss right now they'd only knock their helmets together.

Fuck, what is he even thinking. If they tried to kiss right now someone would probably _see_ them because they're at the fucking _rink_. But he wants to, so badly, and the worst part - or the best? - is that John looks like he wants to as well. They both stare at each other like they're waiting for something to happen, and also know that nothing can.

"Well," John says at last. Is it Mitch's imagination or does his voice sound a little hoarse? He swallows. "We should, ah."

"Yeah, right," Mitch nods, and his voice comes out kind of croaky too. He clears his throat and manages a more or less normal smile. "Good talk."

He holds up a fist and John snorts in surprise and then bumps it, and they head up the tunnel and onto the ice together. Not that they actually talked. They're probably going to have to do that for real at some point, but not here, and not while John's looking at him like he was just then, like he was picturing him naked or something. Mitch immediately wishes he hadn't had that thought, because now he's imagining both of them naked, together, and that's just not a team-activity-appropriate thought.

That one's getting revisited after skate, though, for sure.

*

"Come in."

Valeriya sounds bored. She doesn't look up from the laptop on her desk when Mitch opens her office door. Somehow it seems weird to see a witch using a laptop like a normal person. What does a witch need a laptop for? Black magic spreadsheets? Is she ordering more newt testicles off eBay? He coughs awkwardly.

"Uh, hey. You wanted to see me?"

Valeriya flicks a glance at him without lifting her head and then points towards a table by the door.

"Your new amulet," she says. "Extra strength."

Mitch looks around and winces. The table looks like it's set up to summon demons or something, all dripping black candles and crystals and ornaments shaped like skulls. Marty told him the bench witch on Long Island is this middle aged dude who looks like a high school gym teacher and wears the same perfectly white tracksuit every day, so Mitch is pretty sure Valeriya doesn't _need_ all this spooky crap to do her job, she just likes making people uncomfortable. Well, it's working.

He spots the new amulet lying amongst the creepy witch paraphernalia and picks it up gingerly by the chain. It looks exactly the same as his old one, a shiny silver sixteen, but it feels different somehow, like it's loaded. That's probably the extra strong spells making the hair stand up on the back of his neck. Or is it just a bit heavier than the old one? Do spells weigh anything?

"Thanks," Mitch says uncertainly, the chain dangling from his finger. He's been waiting for this for months, but now he's finally got his own personal amulet back he doesn't feel as relieved as he thought he would. Did the last one always feel this...magicky??

"You can leave the temporary one there," Valeriya says dispassionately, so Mitch fishes the slightly cracked amulet out from the neck of his shirt and drops it onto the table full of witchy junk. Hopefully she won't notice the crack. Yikes. Does it look bigger now than it did the other day? 

He can't see any way out of putting the new amulet on in its place, so he does that too.

Ugh. He remembers his old one being more comfortable than this. He'd thought the itching from the temporary amulet was just because it wasn't made for him, wasn't attuned to his, like, essence or whatever. Some kind of mystical bad fit, like wearing someone else's skates, but on your soul. But if anything this amulet feels worse than that one. He rubs the back of his neck uncomfortably.

"Problem?" says Valeriya, looking up. Jesus, that glare is piercing. It's even more uncomfortable than the amulet.

"No," he lies. "It's great, thanks."

"Good. It took a lot of work, so try not to get cursed again, won't you."

"Not planning on it," Mitch says, tucking his new amulet down the front of his shirt. "I'm still recovering from the last time." It's not cold like metal should be, it feels as warm as if someone else has already been wearing it, which is...fucking creepy, honestly. Plus it makes his skin tingle, like pins and needles.

"Oh that's right, your little...love problem," Valeriya's perpetually bored look brightens. She props her chin on one red-taloned hand and smirks at him. "So did you take my advice to end it? Or did you wait for it to end naturally?"

"It hasn't ended," Mitch says, technically not answering the question. He hears John's voice in his head saying pointedly _that's not what I said_ , and turns his head so he won't smile too obviously. "But it's fine, I'm actually getting used to it now, so--" 

Valeriya cuts him off with a snort and waves her hand at him.

"Rubbish," she says. "It has been what...two weeks?"

"Uh, three," says Mitch. But who's counting?

"You are playing with me," Valeriya scoffs. He isn't, but he's ready to admit to it if it'll get him out of her office so he can go home and take this fucking itchy amulet off. "A lust curse will only last for four or five days, _maybe_ a week if it's particularly strong."

Her words hit Mitch like a hundred mile an hour slapshot right to the face.

"What?" he says blankly.

"Three weeks?" She shakes her head. "Three weeks. It just would not happen."

Valeriya turns her attention back to the laptop screen in front of her and snorts derisively again, focusing back on newt related auctions or whatever it is she has the internet for. Meanwhile Mitch's entire brain is, like, alarm bells.

"No," he says, "that can't be right."

Valeriya raises her eyebrows. "My expertise is pretty well documented," she says dryly, pointing over her shoulder. And okay, she's got certificates on the wall behind her with her witchcraft qualifications on them. But that's beside the point. She might be the expert on magic, but Mitch is the expert on _Mitch_ , and he can say for absolute certain that whatever made him want John is still going strong.

"It _definitely_ hasn't worn off," he insists. His voice has gone all loud. "I don't feel any differently about-- I mean, it's just as bad as when I first--"

"I can guarantee you that you are not still cursed," Valeriya interrupts. "That is not how these spells work. If you feel the same, then…” she shrugs. "Perhaps you were never cursed at all. You are young, perhaps you just have a crush."

Mitch opens his mouth to tell her that's crazy, but nothing comes out. All the blood rushes to his face instead, his cheeks burning.

"You _told_ me I was cursed," he manages at last.

"As I remember it," says Valeriya, " _you_ told _me_ you were cursed. I did not verify that."

"But I...you're a _witch!_ Shouldn't you have verified it? Shouldn't you _know?_ "

A distant part of Mitch's brain is warning him it might not be a great idea to yell at a witch like this, but most of his brain is just in free fall, barely holding it together. He's not cursed. He's _not cursed?_ He's made all his decisions around being cursed. How can he not be cursed?

"Eh," Valeriya says. "There are expensive and complicated tests for these things, but a mere lust spell is not worth that." She laughs. "Come on now, it's a little funny, yes? Imagine if you had tried my solution and come to tell me it didn't work, and found out that way?"

The laugh that bubbles out of Mitch's throat sounds like it's coming from someone else, sharp and slightly panicky. "Wow, yeah," a stranger says with his voice. "That'd be _really_ crazy."

Valeriya says a few more things about the new amulet, and how he should come back to her if there are any problems with it, and Mitch nods and agrees and barely hears a word of it. There's this loud buzzing noise in his ears that might just be his entire soul trying to leave his body. He backs out of the room and drifts through the arena like he's sleep walking, completely detached from a reality that suddenly feels upside down and incomprehensible.

Not a single coherent thought makes it into his head until he's back in the car, and then the sensation of his phone buzzing in his pocket with an incoming message startles him back to life. When he sees it, he feels so many things at once he thinks he might puke.

JT  
 _Want to come over after game tonight? :)_

It's not even a real emoji, just a dumb punctuation smiley face, and Mitch feels desperately fucking soft about it until he remembers he's not cursed, and suddenly the soft and fond and melty feeling is unfamiliar and weird. How can he react like this and not be cursed?

He drops his phone onto the passenger seat and hides his head in his arms against the steering wheel.

Fuck. He’s going to have to tell John.

What’s he even supposed to say? Hey bro, turns out I was never cursed, just really horny? Sorry about all the sex? He groans out loud. If he thought being cursed was humiliating, admitting he...what...accidentally tricked his friend into hooking up with him? Repeatedly! That's going to be so, so much worse. He wouldn't blame John if he never wanted to speak to him again, though the thought of that makes him feel physically sick. Maybe he should just forget about re-signing in the summer and ask for a trade now to save everyone the embarrassment.

He looks over at his phone like it's a live snake poised to strike at him.

Leaving a message like that on read would be truly a dick move after everything that's happened in the last twenty-four hours. But he just...he _can't_. They've got a game in like eight hours. He needs to go home, eat, sleep, try and clear his head so he doesn't play like an absolute loser tonight and make everything worse. He can't think about John or curses or...or _non_ -curses, or any of that right now. He'll apologise later. God, he's going to be doing a lot of that, probably.

It's not until he's halfway home that the biggest unasked question occurs to him.

If nobody cursed him in that Islanders game...then what the hell happened to his amulet?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god, I'm alive! To anyone who's still here, you're amazing and I love you, thanks for your patience as my life has completely derailed my writing schedule and brain for two months, yikes. Hopefully less of a wait before the final chapter!


	4. Shattered

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG I fucking finished it! Thank you so much to everyone who patiently kept reading this fic well past my extremely optimistic projected deadline (six months ago, yikes), you are all wonderful patient saints and I love you. I hope the ending lives up to my annoyingly drawn out timeline, your lovely comments have kept me going when writing has been the last thing I wanted to do lately <3
> 
> The timeline of this fic started real-world-schedule-compliant but, as my fics often do, strayed away from the real schedule a bit for plot reasons. The Leafs did play the Caps at home in January and they did win! But not this soon after the Florida road trip, and obviously it didn't go quite like this haha. Naz had a hat trick that game! Yay Naz! I miss him. So many ex-leafs in this chapter.
> 
> Finally, I gotta say one last thing: for recent real world reasons I probably would've preferred not to have Auston in this chapter. But I wrote the scene he’s in months ago, and while I thought about cutting or changing it, I couldn't make that work so it stayed as is. Not to start this (hopefully uplifting!) final instalment on a downer, but as always the characters in my fic are fictional people I made up, that only share names, looks and a few well known biographical facts with their real world counterparts. And sometimes their real world counterparts are disappointing :/

Mitch has a game day routine like anyone else, and he doesn't know what else to do but follow it. He picks up lunch on the way home from the rink and then sits in his silent apartment and stares at the wall while he eats mechanically, not really tasting it. His mind is a blur.

He's got a set of stretches he usually does before his nap, basic stuff mostly designed to get his brain to slow down enough to rest, but today he's too distracted to concentrate. The new amulet fizzes and itches against his skin like poison ivy until he's forced to take it off, leaving it lying on the carpet beside him.

He tries to concentrate on his body, on the simple, straightforward rhythms of his breathing and pulse and the good ache of stretched muscles, but he can't do it.

He's not cursed. He probably wasn't ever cursed. 

It's making him rethink not just the last three weeks, but his entire life. 

He flops flat onto his back on the floor, arms outstretched. He shouldn't be thinking about this now, not with a game to play in a matter of hours. He can't have a personal identity crisis right before playing the Washington Capitals. Is fucking Ovechkin going to take it easy on him because he's got emotional issues? Is Holtby? No. There's no time for wondering what this means about him, the fact magic had nothing to do with how he's felt these past weeks. He's got to just...suck it up and push through, and he can get back to the whole crisis thing tomorrow. What he should do right now is stop thinking and go take a nap.

But...oh god, the idea of going to bed makes his pulse race. What if the bed still smells like John? What if he can't lie down in that room without remembering John in it with him? He shuts his eyes and feels John's hands gripping his hips, his breath stuttering against Mitch's neck, and it scares him a little, but not in an actually scary way. What's scary about it is that it's not going to happen again, now, and he wants it to, so badly.

Fuck. How's he ever going to look John in the face again once he tells him? Because he's going to have to, he'll have to explain there's no magic spell to break, the whole curse thing was—

Was what, a mistake? A lie?

"Not a _lie_ ," he says out loud to the empty room. "A _misunderstanding_." 

Even with nobody around to hear him, he sounds defensive. Like, okay, Mitch isn't the most introspective guy in the world, but you'd think he would know by now if he was the kind of guy who could have feelings for another guy. You know, without being cursed.

_Gay_ , a little voice in his head corrects him. _The word for "the kind of guy who could have feelings for another guy without being cursed" is gay._

Or bi, he tells the voice. Like John. Actually there's all kinds of labels for—

_Dude, does it matter? You like him. You want him. And you can't use dark magic as an excuse to keep him any more._

Mitch swallows hard. There must have been signs, times before now that he should have known he might want something like this. How do you just miss that?

God, he's got to tell John, and it's going to _suck_.

The phone is in his hand before he makes a conscious choice to use it, the number pulled up in his contacts before he can talk himself out of it. This the only way Mitch knows how to deal with problems; if he thinks about it for too long he's going to overthink it and make a mess of everything. If he moves too fast for his brain to keep up maybe he can trick himself out of being scared.

The phone rings for so long he thinks it's going to go through to voicemail, but finally it connects.

"I was fucking asleep."

Auston's voice is cracked and rough like he still might be. Still, he picked up the phone, so that's his problem.

"I don't care, I'm having a crisis," Mitch tells him. "I need a sounding board.”

Like he was going to have _that_ conversation with John on a game day. He's not an _idiot_.

Auston groans. "So call a hotline or something," he says, sounding muffled like he's put a pillow over his face. "I'm not your therapist."

" _Matts_ ," Mitch whines.

"Ugh, god, alright. What is it?"

Mitch opens his mouth to answer and...nothing comes out. Where does he even start with this? What does he even want to get out of this call? He's not calling up Auston to find out if he's gay or not, that doesn't really seem like something you get other people to confirm for you. That should be something you can see for yourself. But it still feels like his memories of himself are all askew, like he needs someone level headed to help him sift through them now he's looking at himself in a totally new light. And without anyone level headed to talk to, Auston is close enough.

Actually maybe he should have called Marty. Why didn't he call Marty? He feels nervous at the thought of it and doesn’t know why. Actually he hasn't talked to Marty about the curse situation at all, apart from that one phone call where he hamfistedly asked about witches, and the idea of filling him in now feels far more uncomfortable than telling Auston about it had been.

Woah, what's _that_ about.

Auston makes an exasperated noise. "Listen, if you woke me up just to sit there and breathe into the phone, I'm—"

“Do you think I had a crush on Marty?”

Mitch doesn’t know where that came from. It wasn’t even on his radar of things he might say, but it just kind of leaps out of his mouth like it was sitting there waiting for a chance to be said.

He expects Auston to laugh, or at least act surprised, but he doesn't.

“I mean,” he says slowly. He still sounds groggy, but there's something cautious about him now too. “Well, yeah. You’ve got that whole older guy mentor thing.”

All Mitch's held breath goes out of him in a rush. "What mentor thing?"

"You know, the…" Auston sighs. "This is awkward, dude, I thought you were...you know." He stumbles over his words like the one he wanted to use doesn't fit right, or maybe like he doesn't know if he should say it. "Self aware."

"I _am_ ," Mitch says, sitting up.

"Okay," says Auston. "But it's like...you latch onto some vet, you kind of hero worship him a bit, and then you get all obsessed about it. It's your whole thing."

"Geez," Mitch splutters. "Don't hold back or anything." 

His face is hot and he wants to cover it with his hands, even though there's nobody else in the room to see him going red. He rubs the back of his hand across his mouth. He thought he _was_ self aware. He thought, if he was into guys, he'd hidden that so completely he didn't even know it himself. And now Auston's telling him he was _only_ hiding it from himself?

"I said it was awkward," Auston says uncomfortably.

They fall into silence, and it _is_ awkward, which is a feeling Mitch isn't used to having with Auston. He doesn't like it.

“When you say _self aware_ ,” he says, because he wants to be sure. He can practically see Auston squirm over it through the phone. “You mean gay, right?"

Auston coughs.

"You thought I was gay?”

“I don’t know. I mean, you talk about girls like a normal… uh." Mitch flinches at "normal," but Auston doesn't follow through on that thought, which is something. "But...yeah, that sort of thing I guess. I figured if you weren’t talking about it then you didn’t want to talk about it, so I didn’t say anything.”

Mitch turns that over in his mind. Don't ask don't tell. It feels weird to think that whether he was "normal" or not has been a question floating around Auston's mind this whole time and he never even knew it. Like, Auston obviously doesn't care - or doesn't think it has anything to do with their friendship, anyway - and okay, that's great, sure. But...he thinks about John living in his giant empty display house and not telling anyone he's bi, and it makes him feel sort of sad that none of his friends have ever even asked.

"It's cool if you are," Auston says into the silence, with this kind of exaggerated casual vibe. "Like, I'll support you, or whatever. Sorry, I probably should've said that first, I just...haven't known any gay dudes before?"

You have, Mitch thinks, you just didn't know it. This is probably why. He doesn't say it out loud, though, because Auston's trying and he does believe him about the supporting thing. He wasn't an asshole about the curse, even though it was, like. Objectively hilarious, from an outside perspective.

It doesn't feel as funny now.

"But if you are, shouldn't you already know whether or not you had a crush on Marty?"

"I guess so," Mitch says. He'd never thought about it that way at the time, but he can see it now. It's obvious in the way their dinners were the highlight of his week, in his weird friendly-competitive thing with Syd, in the way he'd felt like the bottom was falling out of his life when he found out about Marty going back to New York. Those feelings are kind of distant now, not as urgent, but they're not gone completely.

He doesn't know if it makes him gay, but that's two dudes now he's been into in kind of a gay way, so.

He starts to laugh. It's not really that funny, but the absurdity of it hits him all of a sudden. Like...come on, he convinced himself he was under a witch's curse so he wouldn't have to confront any messy feelings about a teammate? What? You have to laugh at that.

"I don't know, I think I'm just kind of repressed, dude," he says, and laughs some more.

Auston snorts. "No shit," he says dryly. "The whole curse thing isn't really the same, though, right? It's magic, not real stuff."

Mitch's laughter fizzles out as abruptly as it started. 

"Ah, yeah. About that."

Telling Auston the curse wasn't real is good practice for telling John, Mitch tells himself, even if the context is kind of different. Auston doesn't say anything while he explains it, just makes a few quiet rustling noises over the phone, until Mitch starts to wonder if maybe he's tuned out and gone back to sleep. But when he's finished, Auston speaks up.

"Actually, that's kind of a relief. I was starting to wonder how he was going to handle playing with you when it finally got broken."

"Huh?" Mitch wrinkles his nose. "Why?" He's the one who had the embarrassing obsession, after all, not John. Like, yes, there'd been a...a _moment_ or something earlier today at the rink, and there was that kiss goodnight...but those are just little things, little circumstantial things that just mean John's enjoyed the attention, which probably anyone would do. And Auston doesn't know about any of that stuff, anyway.

"Uh," Auston says slowly, "Cause he's like in love with you or something?"

Mitch chokes on nothing.

"Uh, wow," he manages eventually, after the coughing fit subsides. "That's...you've lost your entire mind."

"Oh come on," says Auston. "I told you this in Florida, there's no just buddies explanation for how hard he's been going on this whole curse breaking thing."

"He's a really good teammate."

"Mitchy," Auston says flatly, like he's talking to an idiot. " _I'm_ a really good teammate, and I would not give you a bj if it meant us winning the Stanley Cup every year for the rest of our lives. And I definitely wouldn't do it over and over again if it didn't work the first time."

As Mitch is opening his mouth to say there was only one bj, he realises that's maybe not the point.

"He wants the curse gone," he says stubbornly instead. He wouldn't keep asking about it if he didn't, wouldn't have kept trying.

"Right," says Auston. It's that maddeningly superior tone he uses when he thinks he's smarter than you.

"He does!"

"Of course he does," says Auston; Mitch can practically hear the eyeroll. "Would _you_ want to have someone you liked hanging all over you just because of magic? It probably feels like shit."

Mitch has to lie down again. He sprawls back onto the floor and stares at the ceiling without seeing it. His phone's getting hot in his hand; he can feel his cheek starting to sweat where the warm glass is stuck to it.

"I hadn't thought about it like that," he says.

There's a text on his phone that says _want to come over after game tonight?_ Not _let's try and break the curse again_ , just...want to come over? With a stupid, cute little smiley face. And he'd said thank you for dinner like it was a date, and kissed Mitch goodnight like he wanted to leave on a high note. Not for the curse, just for the hell of it.

Maybe...an idea floats across the surface of his mind and his breath catches. It's the feeling of watching a puck drift towards an empty net, when it's still too early to tell if your aim was right. 

Maybe John will be _glad_ the curse wasn't real.

He lets Auston go back to his nap - which Auston says is ruined, even though Mitch knows he'll be asleep again in under a minute - but he still can't even think about sleeping.

The only difference is now he's not dreading the moment he sees John again at the arena. Now it can't come soon enough.

*

Mitch is a high energy kind of person, he's usually bouncing off the walls in the couple hours at the rink before a game, but tonight it feels like all that energy is pent up, trapped under the surface of his skin until he's vibrating all over with it. His amulet is itching like crazy, and the closer they get to go time the more the feeling spreads through his entire body, right to his tingling fingertips. Maybe protective spells and nerves don't mix.

It's not the game he's nervous about, obviously. It's after.

John's pre-game routine is like clockwork, and Mitch hasn't actually seen him yet, but that's not that weird. Mitch is trying to make himself _believe_ it's not that weird. He didn't text back, in the end, because...well, he told himself it was because he didn't want to wake up a second teammate mid nap, but really it was just because he chickened out. He's gonna say something, though. As soon as John makes an appearance. Any minute now.

He's not really paying much attention to the hallway soccer game. Mo punts the ball in his direction and he notices a second too late; he flails at the ball with a frantic high kick and catches it with just the edge of his shoe, and it flies up into the roof space. Everyone groans.

"I got it, I got it," Travis yells, but he does not have it. The ball's stuck, wedged between an air conditioning duct and the wall, way out of reach. The chirps are instant and merciless, but Mitch deserves it; he takes what's coming to him.

Some of the guys start trying to work out how to get the ball back and Mitch takes the break in the game as an opportunity to peer down the corridor towards the trainers' rooms. John normally drops into the soccer game for a minute or two towards the end. Unless he's, like, actively avoiding Mitch now. Shit, maybe he should've replied to that text.

“Nice work,” someone says, and whistles. Mitch jumps, but it's just Tyler. He's watching Travis try to poke at the trapped ball with a spare stick, while Mo, Goat and Naz stand around with their arms crossed making helpful suggestions and doing nothing to actually help. “Bench witch get in your head or something?"

Mitch blinks.

"You had to see the witch after skate right?" says Tyler. He does a dramatic shudder. "She gives me the creeps. I mean, you know, respect. But I think all that magic makes some people go weird, right?"

"For _sure_ ," Mitch says, with feeling. Even fake magic is making him go weird. Where the fuck is John? "What was your last witch like?" he says distractedly, craning his neck to try and see around the corner.

Tyler shrugs. "Just a guy, like any of the staffer guys, really. Young dude, not like, spooky or anything. D'you know when I got here, your witch told me the guy in Buffalo didn't know what he was doing? Made me switch to one of her amulets? She wouldn't even let me wear mine while she was making the new one, I had to use one of her emergency spares."

Mitch doesn't love having Valeriya called "his" witch, but he grimaces at the thought of emergency amulets.

"Ugh, those ones suck," he commiserates. Not that his custom one seems to suck any less - it's tingling even now - but Tyler probably doesn't have the extra strength protective spells.

"Eh," Tyler shrugs. "It was a bit bigger than my normal one, ugly as hell, but it's not that bad under gear. I was just like...seriously? You think my old witch was that bad you can't trust the guy's work for a couple of _weeks?_ "

He laughs and Mitch smiles back automatically, but the tingly feeling from his amulet seems to flare suddenly, like talking about magic is making it worse. He flexes his fingers and tries not to think about scratching. 

"It wasn't, like...itchy?"

Tyler squints at him. "What, like was I allergic or something? Nah, it was fine. Pretty sure it's made from the same stuff as my old one."

"No, I mean the magic. It doesn't feel, like...weird to you?"

Now Tyler looks at Mitch like he's he's talking absolute nonsense. "Uh. Is that a joke?" he scrunches his nose. "You can't _feel_ magic."

"Hey, Mitchy!" Naz shouts across the room, "Get over here, we're going to put you on Freddy's shoulders and see if you can reach the ball!"

"Why do I have to do it?" Mitch yells back, but he's already jogging over. He can feel Tyler staring at him like he's totally weird, and he can't get away fast enough, suddenly self conscious. It can't be _that_ weird. John said temporary amulets are uncomfortable too, didn't he?

He's halfway onto Goat's back when John finally makes an appearance. It's probably not possible that he got hotter since morning skate, but Mitch wouldn't put money on it. He looks _really_ fucking good.

“Uh,” he says, scratching the back of his head and squinting up at Mitch, “is this safe?”

As if in answer to the question, Goat takes a step forward and Mitch is so busy gazing at John that he forgets to hold onto anything and nearly falls off. He clenches his knees together reflexively and grabs a handful of hair, and Goat lets out a yelp of protest.

“Oof, sorry bud,” says Mitch. “Hold my feet or something, will you?” 

Okay, so it’s feeling like a worse idea now he’s up here, top heavy and trying to keep his balance without, like, squeezing Goat’s head off with his thighs. The dude is _tall_. John makes a face like a constipated muppet, unconvinced.

"Lighten up, Johnny,” Naz says, clapping him on the shoulder. "If he dies, he dies. We'll get you a new winger.” Mitch aims a kick at his head and misses.

“At least get him a stick or something to poke it free with,” says Mo as Mitch tears his eyes away from John and scans overhead for the soccer ball.

The guys look around for the stick Travis was using before, but it seems like overkill from up here; with his arm outstretched Mitch is barely an inch from the underside of the ball, his fingers straining in the air. If he could just stretch a _little_ further, he'd have it, he could tap it loose.

"No, I've got it," he grunts, straining his fingers upwards. "Almost."

"Careful," says John. Mitch glances down at him and grins.

“Alright mom,” he says, before turning back to his mission. Just half an inch further. “I’m being— ow, fuck!”

The sharp, sudden pain comes out of nowhere, like being donkey kicked in the chest, and suddenly Mitch is falling backwards. He throws his hands out to grab hold of something, anything, but there's nothing but empty air.

Then before he has time to panic, John swoops in like Prince Charming and catches him in his arms.

It could be a meet cute in a movie, Mitch thinks, half hanging off Goat’s back with John’s arms wrapped around his chest holding him up: guy meets love of his life while falling off a giant.

Great, Mitch has been curse-free for less than twenty four hours and it’s already into “love of his life” territory. Very cool, very normal.

“Oh hey,” he says, so he doesn’t do something crazy like kiss John in front of all their teammates. “Just thought I’d drop in.”

“For fuck’s sake,” John shakes his head, trying not to laugh. Mitch's feet find the floor, a little clumsily, and now that he can stand up on his own without John touching him he kind of has to, but it sucks. Suddenly every nerve in his body is singing hey! Hey look, John's here! Why would he want to think about anything else now that John's here? He looks so good. He smells good too. Ugh.

It's the first time he's been within reach of him since his whole not-cursed-maybe-just-horny revelation and Mitch finds he literally can't stop smiling at him. He must look completely nuts. John smiles back, looking politely puzzled about it.

Horny's the wrong word, Mitch thinks as he marvels at the unbelievably perfect confused tilt of John's eyebrows. That sounds superficial, like it's just a sex thing, but the whole point is that it was never just the sex. That's the whole reason he should have known that he wasn't under a curse from the moment Valeriya first described it to him, how she said it was just lust that could be forced with magic. There needs to be a word for being horny for someone's whole personality and presence in your life. It's like he's horny for John's _heart_.

"What happened?" says Goat, forcibly reminding Mitch that there are other people here too. "Did you burn yourself on a water pipe or…?"

"Hm?" Mitch blinks. "Oh. I guess I must've," he says, rubbing his knuckles over his chest. It doesn't hurt, now.

"Worth it," says Naz as he scoops the ball up off the floor. Wait, the ball? That's a little weird. Mitch never actually reached it, did he? He's scratching his head trying to remember when he realises John's walking away, and the soccer ball mystery immediately loses its interest.

"Hey wait," he calls, chasing after. John stops and turns to look at him, and his face is a perfect, handsome blank. Polite, but closed off, somehow. It's like Mitch is a rogue reporter trying to catch him in a candid moment and he's not giving anything away, and it pulls Mitch up short.

"Um, hey," he says, guilt surging through him suddenly. "I got your text. Sorry I didn't reply earlier." 

He was going to make up some kind of excuse for why he hadn't, but now he's here looking John in the eye he can't think of anything that won't sound lame. He doesn't really want to lie.

"Oh don't worry about it," says John. He almost cracks a real human facial expression then, but Mitch can't tell if it's good or bad. It makes him feel like an asshole either way. " _I'm_ sorry, I shouldn't have—"

"No, you definitely should've," Mitch says firmly. He reaches out with no conscious plan behind it, and it's like he's watching his own body from a distance, helpless to stop anything. Okay, now he's grabbing John's hand. Now he's linking their fingers together; his spontaneous reassuring gesture has turned into spontaneous actual hand-holding. This is a thing that's happening now.

John's robotic expression softens a little, uncertain.

"I just had to…" Mitch shakes his head. "Look, there's some stuff I need to tell you about. That invitation still good?"

John just looks at him for a moment, his face unreadable. Then he nods, and smiles just a little. "Yeah. And...there's something I should probably tell you about, too."

He squeezes Mitch's hand and then they just stand there looking at each other, holding hands, right out in the open where anyone could walk up and see them. The little soft half smile on John's face is growing, and Mitch doesn't know if he's imagining it or what but it feels like they're drifting closer as they stand there, pulled into each other's orbit. Is this...what it feels like it is? Was Auston _right?_

"Okay, sure," Mitch says. "And uh, while we're telling each other shit," - he lowers his voice because of the whole sort of in public thing - "I want to kiss you so bad right now, man. Like, real bad."

It's kind of cheating, because John doesn't know there's no curse yet, but holy shit. Nobody could blame Mitch for thinking this feeling was magic; it's like sparks are flying off his skin where they touch. John chuckles.

"Better not," he says, but he's smiling properly now. "Save it for after the game, eh?"

"Alright, bet," Mitch grins. "Let's make it a quick one, though."

He's walking away with the grin still plastered to his face when he realises his amulet isn't itching any more. It's like the sheer goofy pleasure of flirting just put it on mute for a second. Wow, this whole crush thing is awesome, actually. Mitch is suddenly seized with the conviction that telling John the curse wasn't real isn't just going to be fine, it's going to be _great_. He should flirt at the rink more often.

But as he gets further away from John and the amulet stays all muted, he starts to feel uneasy. When he gets to the locker room, he goes to his spot and fishes the amulet out of the neck of his shirt to check it, turned towards the wall so nobody else can see. 

It's got a big spider web crack right across the front of it. 

Fuck.

Again? How the hell does this keep happening? More of the other guys are starting to wander in now to dress, and Mitch knows he should probably do something, go tell the bench witch, get a new amulet before the game starts. But it's only like half an hour until puck drop. What if she tells him he can’t play until she figures out what’s wrong with him?

It can wait until after the game. Then he’ll go tell Valeriya. It’s risky, playing with an amulet that doesn’t work, but only if someone actually tries to curse him, and how often does that happen? Like, even when he thought it'd happened, it hadn't. It’s probably fine.

Mitch puts his head down and changes as fast as he can.

*

He doesn't know if it's the weight of the fake curse off his mind or the thrill of all this new knowledge about himself freeing him up, but he just feels amazing out on the ice, like he can't do anything wrong. He's flying up and down the ice, dangling guys' jocks off, firing pass after pass through traffic. This is the real magic.

And to make things even better, at every turn there's John right where he needs him, anticipating every move. If Mitch wasn't already in love with the guy, this game might do it. They complement each other so perfectly. _Fuck_ , good hockey is sexy.

Washington are good, though, and they make them work for it. They go to overtime tied up at two, and Mitch goes over the boards with this bright, burning feeling of determination, focused as a laser beam. One more goal, and it's done. He meets John's eye as they set up for the face off, and they exchange a fierce little smile. One more goal and they can leave, and he can tell John everything.

John wins it clean and Mitch heads up the ice, Mo on his right and John on his left. He can still feel exactly where John is on the ice, even when he can't actually see him. It's only now that he realises it's never been witchcraft at all, it's just good fucking hockey, the kind of magic that comes from chemistry and trust and just knowing your liney is one of the best.

He passes to John for the finisher, and John taps it right back to him so fast Holtby's still wide open, and that's all it takes. He shoots! He scores! The Leafs win!

Mitch throws his arms up and jumps into the glass behind the net, a forest of blue-jerseyed fans roaring to their feet. John's the first one to reach him, lit up and shouting incoherently, and there's this moment where Mitch feels glorious and invincible. Like, who fucking cares about curses and non-curses, about witches and secrets and labelling anything, who gives a fuck about any of that when you're doing what you were born to do, what you _love_ , and doing it with someone you love, who might even...god, he's so fucking happy he feels like his chest is going to explode.

And then John connects with him so hard their helmets crack together, both of them laughing, and—

Everything really does explode.

Not in a metaphorical romantic way or anything. There's a sound like a thundercrack and the pane of glass against Mitch's back _literally explodes_.

John's momentum carries both of them right over the boards and into the crowd, and then everything's screaming and chaos and people jumping to their feet as tempered glass rains down around them. Mitch doesn't know if he's one of the people screaming, he can't see, everything's upside down, and then he's on the ground and John's on top of him, swearing and wild-eyed. It occurs to Mitch that he's trying to protect both their heads from the people leaping out of their seats.

"You're bleeding on me," Mitch tells him dazedly.

"Are you alright? Did I hurt you?”

Mitch sits up. John seems to think that's a bad idea, but Mitch does it anyway, shaking him off. He just wants to see what's going on. The people he fell on have mostly cleared out of the way and fans are hovering around trying to get a good look at him and John while the arena staff try and shepherd them away from the broken glass. Two of the plastic seats have snapped under the weight of whoever was sitting on them and two entire hockey players falling in their laps, and a little kid halfway down the row is wailing, loud and inconsolable.

"Did we hurt any of _them?_ "

John ignores the question and cups the back of Mitch's helmet with his glove. "Your head," he says, soft and urgent. "Did you--"

"Everyone alright here?" says Nicklas Backstrom, of all people, leaning over the boards from the ice. Mo skates up next to him a second later, wide-eyed.

"You guys sure know how to finish a game with a bang, huh?" he grins, a bit too cheerful. Mitch has lost one of his gloves, but he's not injured as far as he can tell. He grins back and even manages a laugh, shaky but real.

"I'm okay," he tells John. By contrast, John has a cut on his cheek and he looks a little frantic. Mitch's laugh has a bit of a wild edge to it too, but it's fine, he's just rattled. He gives John a gentle shove. "Dude, I'm _fine_. Let me up."

John doesn't look convinced, but he gets up anyway and offers a hand to haul Mitch to his feet. Mitch winces as his blades scrape on the concrete. Great, those are ruined.

There's no good reason to hang out in the stands waiting for something to happen, so Mitch climbs back over the boards onto the ice, wincing when his jersey snags on a broken bit of glass. Someone can find his missing glove later. He glances back, expecting John to follow him, but John's just standing there, chewing his lip.

"So, that was magic, right?" says Mo, looking around. The other three Caps are standing around near the goal looking nonplussed, and there's a trainer making his way across the rink with the bench witch a couple of steps behind. Valeriya's red hair is flying out behind her like she's got her own personal wind machine and she looks kind of terrifying. The situation in the stands is still chaos. 

"Everyone? Definitely magic?"

"Huge magic," says Backstrom expressionlessly. "Felt my amulet blow out from three feet away." He leans on his stick and tilts his head at Mitch. "So, which one of you guys is the witch?"

Mitch hears the words, but it takes a second to absorb them. Backstrom looks totally deadpan, disinterested by his own question, but there's something menacing about it, something that leaves Mitch with this weird sense of dread before he’s really conscious of what he just heard. And then one by one several things start to click into place.

There was no witch on the Islanders. He's broken three amulets in as many months with no idea how it happened, amulets that can only be broken with powerful spells. Tyler says it's not normal to feel magic. He doesn't remember how he got the soccer ball unstuck before he fell. And just now, when he was on the ice with _another_ broken amulet, when he was having so many feelings at once he felt like he was going to explode...

He...

Oh _shit_.

He whirls around to look at John, who's still standing on the other side of the barrier with blood on his face, making no move to get back on the ice. John doesn't look at him, and Mitch's stomach drops. He's just worked it out. He's just worked out that Mitch is...he's worked it out a _second_ before Mitch did, and now he's looking at everything that's happened since December in a whole new, horrible light.

Mitch takes a step towards him - he doesn't know what he's going to say or do, just that he needs to say something, needs to explain himself somehow, even though he barely understands it himself - and then John speaks first.

"I am," John says. "The witch is me."

* * *

It's late. 

Is it late? It _feels_ late. It feels like Mitch has been sitting here for hours.

The linoleum floor is cold. It's so cold there's a chill seeping into Mitch's muscles, and so is the wall against his back, but he doesn't want to move. Maybe can't move. He wraps his arms around his knees and leans his head against them and hopes nobody comes down this corridor and asks him what's wrong, because he wouldn't even know where to begin answering that question.

His amulet is in two pieces on the floor next to him, split down the line between the one and the six. It looks like one of those dumb friendship necklaces girls used to give each other in elementary school, where there are two halves of a heart or two puzzle pieces that lock in together or something. It's meant to symbolise the wearers as two halves of the same whole, but those necklaces are supposed to look like that and his is just broken, so it doesn't mean anything 

He can't feel the fizzing, itchy magic sensation when he touches it any more, but if he shuts his eyes and concentrates he can feel something similar all over his body; a humming vibration just under his skin that's almost too subtle to notice. Is that it? Magic? He figures it must be. It wasn't the amulet that was tingling like a hornet trapped under a glass this whole time, after all. It was just him, something in him unconsciously testing those magic dampening protective spells. The thought makes him feel sick.

If he turns the two amulet pieces around on the floor, he can make them change from a sixteen to a ninety one, but he doesn't know if that means anything either.

The door opposite opens and Mitch looks up, clapping his hand down over the broken amulet.

John looks surprised to see him. He's got two little white steristrips over the cut on his cheek, and his hair's standing on end as if he's been pulling at it, but other than that he just looks normal. Maybe a little tired. Mitch scrambles to his feet.

"Oh, are you, uh. Are you waiting for me?"

Mitch stuffs the pieces of his amulet into his pocket. "Um, I'm supposed to see Valeriya, actually."

John somehow manages to look relieved and disappointed at the same time. He nods, looking down. "Right, right. She's going to need your side of it for the report, I guess."

"Report?"

"Incident report. I mean, I'm registered, obviously," John says, and Mitch thinks: obviously?? He didn't even know there was any kind of registration for witches. Registered with who? The league? Some kind of...department of witches? "But things still have to be documented. I haven't lost control like that since...well, never, really. Didn't know I could do anything like that."

Mitch presses his lips together on a barrage of questions. He does not for a single second believe that explosion was because of John somehow "losing control." Whether he's a witch or not, John’s just not the kind of guy who does that, who randomly blows stuff up.

_Mitch_ was the one skating without a working amulet. Mitch was the one just spewing out wild unchecked feelings all over the place. John gives you the impression that he's never lost control of anything in his life, but Mitch has felt like he's barely holding it together for weeks now, ever since they started losing that fucking game against the Islanders. 

Figuring out you're kind of gay and probably in love and totally a witch all on the same day feels like a lot to deal with at once.

"Will you...get into trouble for it?" he asks. He's never heard about anyone being fined or suspended for doing magic in a game, but then he's never seen anyone do obvious magic in a game either, so. It's illegal, could be suspendable. John shrugs, shaking his head.

"Who knows. I don't care about that, anyway, I'll take whatever's coming to me. Listen..." 

He fixes Mitch with a very serious look. It makes Mitch suddenly nervous.

"I know you've got no reason to believe this," he says. "But I need you to know I would never curse you on purpose. Please know that.”

"What?" Mitch blinks, startled. Somehow he'd forgotten, in all the chaos, that John still doesn't know the curse wasn't real. He doesn’t even know how to tell him, now. Does...does John think _he_ cursed Mitch? Without realising?

John looks grim. "It's okay, I get it. Me being a witch...that was a big thing to keep from you under the circumstances. It was cowardly of me."

He sounds like he's reading a prepared statement or something. All of a sudden Mitch feels like there's a wall in between them, or a big deep pit of misunderstandings and unspoken things that's getting wider every second.

He can’t stand it.

"There was no curse," Mitch blurts out. Because after all his agonising it really is as simple as that. “I made a mistake.”

John's face goes completely blank, like surprise has wiped the expression off it. He stares at Mitch for a second.

“A...mistake?” he says slowly, as if it's a word he's never heard before. Mitch bites his lip.

"Uh, yeah. I mean, all that stuff I told Auston and Auston told you, that was all true, about um," he coughs. The words feel like solid objects sticking in his throat, choking him. "About lust curses and how to break them and whatever. Just...when I thought _I_ was cursed, that part was wrong."

“How…” John’s brow furrows. “How do you get that wrong?”

_Because I was too dumb to realise I'm in love with you_ , Mitch thinks. But he can't say that, not here in a cold echoey linoleum hallway in the depths of the arena. He can't just say _I'm in love with you_ completely out of nowhere, outside a fucking witch's office. It'd sound ridiculous.

Because I'm into you, then? Ugh. That just sounds lame, like something you say at a party to get someone hot that you don't really know to come home with you. John deserves something a bit deeper than _uhhhhh I'm so into you, dude._

"I don't know," Mitch says weakly.

There’s a long pause. The longest pause of Mitch's life. A hundred lifetimes come and go in the space of that pause.

“Right,” says John, blinking. “Well. Okay. I guess I’ll see you.”

And he leaves.

Mitch exhales sharply. That...wasn't how he imagined this moment going. Even in his most tortured imaginings he’d expected John to be angry when he told him, not like this. Not defeated. Now John’s facing suspension or punishment or something, being reported to whatever Player Safety is for witchcraft, and it’s all completely Mitch’s fault.

And like, fuck that.

Mitch bursts into the bench witch's office without knocking, ignores the weird spooky posters and candles and the usual feeling of dread he gets from coming in here, and slaps both hands down on her desk.

"It wasn't him," he announces. "John didn't do the explosion, that was me. If anyone's going to get in trouble for it, I should be the one, you need to—"

Valeriya looks up from her laptop without lifting her head, glaring at him from under dangerously lowered eyebrows, and the look on her face cuts him off short. Mitch swallows.

"Sorry," he says. He sits down. "I just mean...he didn't do anything, it was all me."

Valeriya heaves an enormous, world-weary sigh and rolls her eyes. Now that Mitch looks properly, her desk is covered in papers today; not esoteric witchy ones but official looking printed forms with the NHL logo on them. There's something that looks like a rulebook next to her elbow.

" _I_ know that," she says witheringly. "John Tavares may have many skills but he has the magical talent of a boiled egg.”

All the adrenaline of his confession drains out of Mitch in a whoosh.

A boiled _egg?_

"You...you knew?” he stammers. “About both of us?"

Valeriya sniffs and tosses her hair back over her shoulder. She picks up some of the forms and shuffles them together.

"I knew _he_ was a registered witch," she says, "because the league disclosed that when he signed here, though of course that kind of thing is confidential. And _you_ I figured out at…" she glances at her bare wrist, as if checking a non-existent watch, and then shrugs. "Well, whenever you had your big moment out there.”

“But how did—”

“ _That_ couldn't have been Tavares. I've seen his test scores and he could break, maybe a water glass, if he really lost it. I put new protective spells on that glass just this morning, because they have been wearing down faster than usual." She gestures towards Mitch. "Your handiwork, we must assume."

The competitive spirit in Mitch fires up for a second, and he feels this little flush of pride at the thought that he's, like, some kind of superpowered magic savant or something. Then he remembers that magic is weird and terrifying and he hates it, and whether he's stronger than John really isn't the point right now. He's been wearing down protective spells without even trying? Yikes.

"So you just guessed? Tonight?" he demands. "Shouldn't you, I don't know, be able to _tell_ if you've got two witches on your team?"

He's pushing his luck with that tone, he can tell, but like, seriously? First she doesn't bother to check if he's really cursed, and now this?

" _You_ didn't even know," Valeriya says, making a face at him. "What do you think, there's some kind of catalogue of unregistered witches I can check? They stamp it on your forehead when you're born so it's easy to tell? I'm not psychic."

Mitch grits his teeth so he won't lose it, and then decides to throw caution to the winds and lose it anyway, and then just as he's opening his mouth to say something he'll probably regret saying to someone who can turn him into a frog on a whim Valeriya opens her desk drawer and lifts out an amulet.

It's the emergency one he was wearing while he waited for his second personalised one to be made. Well, he'd worn it during games, but otherwise mostly kept it on his bedside table or in a pocket of his coat where it would touch his bare skin as little as possible. The amulet that had itched like crazy every time he put it on. The one with the big crack along one side that he'd hoped Valeriya wouldn't notice.

"It’s like this,” she says, tossing the amulet onto the desk between them like a winning poker hand, cracked side up. It makes an accusatory clunk that makes Mitch wince. “Having magical potential is like...someone who has concussion. There are signs, symptoms, ways you can suspect. But if you don't _report_ any of the signs to me there's no way I can just know."

Mitch stares at the table top, a sour taste in the back of his mouth.

“So,” says Valeriya, “I would guess you’ve had some signs. Irritation, pins and needles feelings, something like that. Some people say it's like butterflies in the stomach, or poison oak, or bees buzzing."

"I thought it was because of the curse," Mitch says. "Or the amulet not being mine, or...John said he hates those temporary amulets too."

Valeriya gives him a _no duh_ kind of look. "And if you had mentioned that to me, the expert, I could have told you he hates them because he also is a witch," she says. "There are different amulets to accommodate that sort of thing. Yours is designed to stop magic from coming _in_ only, and his has spells to stop magic from going _out_ as well." She reaches into the neckline of her dress - Mitch averts his eyes - and produces her own amulet, a blackened filigree pendant with lots of little stars cut out of it. "The ones players wear are like shields, but mine allows me to cast spells freely while it protects me from being enchanted by others. Amulets aren't one size fits all, you know."

Mitch didn't know. How was he supposed to know that? If anyone ever told him, he would've tuned out as soon as the topic of magic came up. His shoulders droop.

"Okay, I get it," he says. "I had the wrong amulet because I didn't tell you it felt wrong."

"Right," says Valeriya sternly.

He takes the broken halves of his number sixteen amulet out of his pocket and puts them on the desk next to the other one.

"It was cracked before the game," he says. "I was...there was this thing with a soccer ball, I don't know what happened, but it hurt, and then I realised it was broken. Just a bit. I didn't think it'd matter."

"What happened," Valeriya says, "is magic. Your amulet can withstand a little magic from your end, but not much before it will break."

Mitch rubs a hand over his mouth, feeling sick.

"So I did magic without even knowing about it." 

Before the game tonight he must've done it - done _something_ \- to reach the ball, stuck out of reach a few inches beyond the span of his fingertips. Pretty harmless, although the thought of magic coming _from him_ makes him feel really weird. He wipes his palms on his thighs because they feel all sweaty all of a sudden. 

But that's only one of three broken amulets. There was the curse that wasn't a curse, back when they played the Islanders, what feels like a lifetime ago. And then the crack in his temporary one. He stares at it on the desk, trying to remember when he realised that one was broken.

"Don't worry," Valeriya says, "The amulet John was wearing blocked both of your spells, so no harm was done."

Mitch's head jerks up.

"What?"

"Well, calling them 'spells' is generous," Valeriya says, and snorts. "Witchcraft is _craft_ , I don't just throw my hopes and wishes around and call that a spell. But when the intention is strong enough, it can stick, so it was lucky you picked a target who was protected."

A _target?_ Mitch scoots back from the desk and then puts his face in his hands. There's a leaden pit of dread in his stomach. What if everything he thought had happened from the beginning was completely backwards? What if what Auston thought about John, about him being...having _feelings_ , isn't real, but just because of Mitch and some clumsy fucking accidental spells?

Oh god. What if Mitch is the one who's been casting love curses right from the start? Valeriya says John was protected but how can she be sure? She's missed so many things.

"You're absolutely sure?" he says desperately. Maybe she's wrong. Maybe she's just guessing, or making assumptions again. Please, please don't let her be wrong. "You said there were, like, tests you have to do. Expensive ones."

"Under the circumstances the expense was justified," Valeriya says dryly. "The outburst of an untrained witch could be anything, really. But your teammate is not bewitched. I have the readings here if you would like to see."

She points to a printout covered in numbers and incomprehensible sigils that mean absolutely nothing to Mitch. But the fact there's a chart - something that looks vaguely scientific, in a weird witchy way - is reassuring in a way that just words aren't. Mitch lets out a slow, steadying breath.

"It is especially lucky your attempt at magic didn't get past my protection," Valeriya sniffs, a hint of pride in her voice, "because performance enhancing and luck manipulating spells are, of course, banned."

"Sorry?" says Mitch.

"It looks like you were trying, in your inexpert way, to give your teammate a little extra chance against his former team," Valeriya explains dryly. "Thoughtful, but definitely not allowed."

Right, Mitch remembers now. Even after he'd been pulled because his amulet shattered - when his desperation to win the game for John made magic spill out of him without him even knowing - they'd still lost. John hadn't even scored. He can't help but feel a little disappointed. Like, that's kind of a nice spell to put on someone, even if it is illegal. Then a thought occurs to him.

"You said his amulet blocked _both_ of my spells," he says nervously. He's not sure he really wants to know, but some part of him has to. "Do you know what the other one was?"

He's thinking of the second broken amulet, the one he'd fallen asleep wearing the night John first kissed him in a Florida hotel room. This time, Valeriya's mouth twitches like she's holding back a smile. 

"The other was...sweet."

Mitch's face goes red hot. His mind starts racing, running through all the possibilities, all the murky drunken memories he can dredge up from that night. If it's something about kissing he will actually literally die.

"As best I can tell," she says, definitely smirking now, "the spell was about being open to love. To make a person better able to know that they are...cared for, and to feel treasured by the people around them." She tilts her head, and he can't tell if she's mocking him or actually expressing some kind of sentimentality, for once. "A very generous kind of magic."

Even if it's not about kissing, Mitch still feels like he'll never be able to look her in the eye again.

*

Outside, it's starting to snow. He drives on autopilot, his mind miles away, and before he knows it he's pulling up outside John's front gate, his headlights cutting glittering beams through the falling snow. He cuts the engine and peers up at the house in the dark. There's still a light on downstairs, so John's awake, but he obviously wasn't expecting Mitch to follow through on the whole coming over thing or he would've left the gate open like he did last time. Mitch drums his fingers on the steering wheel, thinking. Then he cuts the engine and gets out of the car.

There's a side gate, one for people not cars. That one's locked too, but Mitch taps the lock and thinks… _I'm a fucking witch_. This is just a lock. What chance has a stupid lock got against actual witchcraft?

Of course, Mitch doesn't have a clue what he's doing, he doesn't even really get how magic works other than the idea that vague intentions make a pretty blunt instrument. But if he can do _three_ spells without even noticing, just by wanting things hard enough, surely that want can get through some dumbass gate. He's never wanted to get through a gate more.

He closes the palm of his hand over the lock, scrunches his eyes shut and thinks: _open up!_

Nothing happens.

Well, okay. Witches like Valeriya who do magic for a living have qualifications and training and shit, so maybe it's a bit much to assume he can just do things by thinking about it really hard with no training at all. But come on, a couple hours ago he blew up a huge sheet of extra-strong freshly-bespelled tempered glass with the power of love or whatever. Surely it can't be that hard to--

"Mitch?"

He's concentrating so hard he doesn't notice John coming down the driveway until he speaks, and then Mitch jumps so hard he skids on the icy path and nearly falls.

"What are you doing here?" John says, bemused. He's got changed and he looks all soft and rumpled in sweats and a sweater. There's snow in his hair. Mitch wants to throw his arms around him but there's this stupid fence in the way.

"I said I'd come over," he says, giving the lock a little flick with his fingers. "You forgot to unlock the gate. What are you doing outside?"

"Well, it's after midnight and someone triggered the security spell on my, uh, locked gate," says John placidly. Mitch thinks he sees the corner of his mouth curl up. "So I came to check it out. You trying to break in?"

"I mean, yeah," Mitch says. He rattles the gate with both hands. "It's freezing, you gonna open this or what?"

"I wasn't really expecting you after...everything," John admits, but he does unlock the gate all the same.

Mitch had this whole plan worked out during the drive over here. He's played out what he's going to say over and over in his head. But now he's here and John's right in front of him and it's late and hushed and fucking _snowing_ , and he's too wrung out for any of it. As soon as John swings the gate open, Mitch trips through it and just hugs him.

John makes a soft sort of _oof_ sound, and Mitch buries his face in his shoulder. He smells like dryer sheets and soap and his own warm familiar John-ness.

"I'm a witch too," Mitch mumbles, muffled by John's sweater. "Did I mention that bit earlier?"

"I kind of figured that when the security spell went off," says John. "It's triggered by magic.”

“I didn’t know until literally today,” Mitch tells him without lifting his head or loosening his grip even a little bit. “Like during the game when everything... Otherwise I would’ve said something before.”

John’s silent for a moment, and then he says, “I guess those spells Valeriya mentioned were yours, then."

Mitch holds his breath, but John doesn't sound mad, and after a second he puts his arms around Mitch so that they’re hugging properly.

“So you’re not cursed, and you’re a witch,” John says. His breath ruffles Mitch's hair. “Is that all the surprises or is there anything else you want to get off your chest?”

“Just one more thing,” Mitch says. He looks up. He takes a breath, holds it, and lets it out in a little white cloud, just watching John frown back at him politely while he gathers his nerve. And then, finally, he kisses him.

It’s not a perfect kiss, because John doesn’t realise what’s happening, so he moves his head at the last second and their noses bump together, and then Mitch does this automatic grin of awkwardness and his teeth get in the way. But then John gets it, he finds a better angle, and their lips line up just right, and then it _is_ perfect, in that dumb hallmark movie kind of way. Like, time slows down, the snow stops feeling wet and cold and turns into some gorgeous sparkly snowglobe magic bullshit, and there's nothing in the world to worry about but John's arms around him and the heat of his mouth and the way Mitch's heart seems to fill up his whole chest.

Okay, so he watches rom coms on the road sometimes. Shut up.

“But…” John says when they break apart (after forever, but also way too soon). “I thought you said...you’re not…”

“I’m not cursed, I just really like you, dumbass,” Mitch says. Which is maybe not the most romantic line in the world, certainly not as smooth as any of the stuff he’d practiced on the drive here. But it’s fucking heartfelt. Probably more on brand than any of that.

John says, “Oh,” which is on brand for him, too. His cheeks are pink, but that could just be the cold. Then he adds innocently, “So, that time in the gym when you got all hot and bothered was just…”

Today is just a greatest hits of Mitch's most humiliating moments while he thought he was cursed, apparently. Jerking off in a gym shower is way more embarrassing when there's no magic involved.

“Just because you’re like, crazy hot, yeah,” he admits, blushing.

"How about that," John says, his little half smile an entire chirp in one facial expression. Mitch's face is on _fire_ now despite the cold so he punches John in the arm. That smug, amused look has no right being so hot.

“You suck,” Mitch complains. “Put me out of my misery, will you? Is this, like, good news to you, or…?”

John's laugh is soft and kind of incredulous, like he's surprised Mitch had to ask. “I’ve been in trouble since I kissed you the first time,” he says, simple as that, and Mitch’s heart feels like it’s doing a somersault in his chest. “That’s what I was going to tell you after the game. That maybe we should dial it back a bit before things got out of hand.”

_Out of hand_. God, Mitch fucking adores him, what the hell.

"I figured you were just going to tell me the witch thing," he says, a little dazed. "So...so you…"

"I really like you too. Dumbass," John says, with this stupid, radiant smile that makes Mitch feel like he could die, right here on the spot, and be totally fine with it.

And then they're kissing again. The kind of kissing where maybe they shouldn't be doing it almost in the street, but it's the middle of the night and nobody's around, and it feels too good to care anyway. Mitch feels like now would be a great time to grab John’s ass, but he’s not sure if he can pull it off as the passion of the moment and not some kind of awkward joke, so he settles for clenching his hands in the fabric of John’s sweater and making a little needy sound in the back of his throat, and John rakes his fingernails through the short hair at the back of Mitch’s neck and makes Mitch’s spine feel like it’s been electrified.

“Not that this isn’t lovely,” says John, his nose brushing Mitch's cheek. _Lovely_. Jesus, Mitch is losing his mind, breathing all ragged, and John’s dropping words like _lovely_. Goddamn right it’s lovely. “But d'you want to come inside? I’m...not really wearing proper shoes.”

Mitch looks down, and...he’s wearing slides. In the snow. White crew socks with Nike slides, like he just stuffed his feet into the first footwear he found on the way out the door. Mitch is this close to blurting out _I fucking love you_ over it, but he pulls it back. Phew.

That settles it. Things have been _out of hand_ the whole time.

Inside, John kicks off his stupid slides, and Mitch stamps the snow off his shoes and takes them off too. John goes to help him get his coat off and somehow that ends in them kissing again, Mitch's back against the wall, his coat forgotten on the floor. He slides his hands under John's sweater until he finds warm skin.

“I didn’t just…" he says, running his hands up John's sides. "I came here to tell you stuff, not just to…" - he interrupts himself with another kiss, he can't help himself - "hook up or whatever.”

“Noted,” John says gravely. “But now you've told me the stuff, d’you want to anyway?”

"I mean, yeah," says Mitch. "But I'm just saying."

John does this low chuckle that Mitch feels all the way down to his toes.

"Why don't you come upstairs," he murmurs. Mitch doesn't need to be asked twice.

John's bedroom is like the rest of the house; obviously decorated by a professional, because Mitch can't imagine John picking that leather accent chair or those floor length drapes, but the unnatural tidiness is all him. _He_ sure doesn't have a pile of shoes at the end of the bed to trip over, or clothes strewn across the chair in the corner because it's too much effort to put them away. He disappears into the ensuite bathroom - "I was just about to brush my teeth," he explains - and leaves Mitch to ponder the decor.

“So,” John calls from the bathroom, “I guess you’re going to have to learn some real witchcraft now, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Mitch says, untying his tie and tossing it onto the chair. He starts on his shirt buttons. "And get registered. Valeriya said there’s like this online course I can do? And she’ll test me on some stuff."

"Sure, I remember all that. Meditation and focus and...It's been a while, though."

“Yeah. I'm not super keen but she said it's mostly—oh, hello."

"Hi," says John, who's come out of the bathroom wearing nothing but his amulet and a small smile. He looks down at himself. “Sorry, too much?”

John naked is nothing Mitch hasn't seen before, in locker room glimpses and plenty of half-clothed fumbling, but the effect of everything at once in soft golden bedroom lighting is...it's something else. It's a lot. Too much is not the phrase he'd use, though.

“No, just. I’ve still got my pants on," he says stupidly.

"Yes, that's certainly something we need to work on,"John agrees, nodding. Then he reaches up and takes off his amulet, too.

“Um, is that safe?” says Mitch. “Around me, I mean.” He knows what he's capable of, now, but that doesn't mean he actually knows how to stop himself from spewing out magic all over the place. Valeriya says she'll have a new, more appropriate amulet for him soon, but right now he's got nothing.

“Hm?” John looks at his own amulet in his hand. “Well, I hope so. It’s broken anyway. From earlier. Honestly, I'm not worried."

Mitch chews his lip nervously. Maybe it's dangerous for anyone to be without an amulet around him before he’s learned how to control himself. He’s tried to put two spells on John already without even knowing he was doing it. But then John's walking over to him and cupping his face in both hands and Mitch suddenly has way more pressing things on his mind, like how warm John is and how _naked_ he is, and how his mouth tastes like toothpaste but in a surprisingly sexy way.

"If I feel like I'm being bewitched," John smiles, gently teasing, "I'll let you know."

He says something else then, but he also starts undoing Mitch's pants at the same time so Mitch completely misses it.

"What?" he says breathlessly, trying to touch as much skin as he can reach at once. He thinks about the second spell, the one about making sure John feels treasured and cared for, and figures maybe if he accidentally casts that one again it won't be so bad.

"I said," says John seriously, "do you want a suit bag for your suit?"

Mitch lets out a startled laugh.

"No," he says, and tries to kiss him, even though he's smiling so hard his teeth get in the way. "I'm a little busy right now."

"Are you sure? Because it's going to get wrinkled if you just leave it on the floor."

"It doesn’t matter," Mitch promises, kicking his pants the rest of the way off. "Just kiss me."

John does, and Mitch knows one thing for sure: he's going to treasure the hell out of him, magic or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PS: Nicklas Backstrom is totally a witch, and Willy knows about it because teenage Nicke used to use magic to cheat at ping pong when the Nylanders were little. I couldn't fit that in the chapter but I thought some of you might like to know 😉


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